A Day In The Life…Of An AU Hogwarts Fanfic
by Serinity46
Summary: an AU fic. Begins to follow a load of Hogwarts people...And two from last names on JKR's list called Serena Spinks and Lilah Moon. a LOT of Crossover with Doctor Who. Other x-over with Torchwood, POTC, Rocky Horror, and a few other things .
1. Dramione

_A/N: This is an AU fic, and is written mostly for my own amusement without attempting to be any kind of masterpiece, so bear with my use of clichés such as Ron/Hermione and Draco/Pansy arguing and 'making up', Lupin, Snape, and Dumbledore all alive and filling their respective posts at Hogwarts, Remus Lupin and the chocolate thing, extra-curriculars and/or convenient rooms that are never mentioned in cannon, and more attention paid to very minor or not-really-cannon-but-having-a-cannon-last-name characters….Oh, and that the plot is pretty much decided upon as I go (key for…it has no real plot an is just an AU fic written for my own amusement…)._

"Ron!" a voice sounded from somewhere inside of the multi-house common room. "If you'd stop being so damn jealous, I could tell you that I don't _fancy_ him any more than _you_ do!"

"Well you two seemed pretty close under that umbrella, Hermione!" Another voice shot back. "That isn't the first time I've spotted the pair of you-"

"_Honestly_ Ronald, it was _raining _for God's sake, and it was a _big_ umbrella!"

"You sure that isn't the _only_ thing of his that's _big_?" Ron muttered.

"Just because he's Head Boy and we've got to do things together, it doesn't mean that we go off _snogging_ every time no one's looking!" Hermione said, exasperated. For the last _freaking time_, she did _not_ have a thing for that puffed-up pureblood, Malfoy! And she knew he certainly wouldn't ever conceder snogging a muggleborn like her…not that she _wanted_ him to, anyways…

"Well…good then." said Ron. He took Hermione's hand and kissed her. "Because we'll wake up the Hufflepuffs if we keep shouting like this."

This was true, the Hufflepuff common room and dormitories were located very near to the multi-house common room; probably because they, having many friends from other houses as well, used them the most. Of course, the Slytherin common room was the furthest away.

"You already _did_" a third voice, Hannah Abbot, said from the doorway. "What on earth are you two screaming about anyways? It's past _midnight_."

"Nothing." Hermione said. "Ron was just being a jealous prat, but we're done fighting over it now."

"What was he jealous over?" Hannah asked, interested.

"Malfoy." Hermione rolled her eyes.

Hannah laughed.

"Like…_Dramione_ or something?" Hannah said, copying something she had seen in a magazine in Muggle Studies…something like '_Brangelina_'… "Even _I_ know that's never going to sail."

"When you two have stopped talking about what an idiot you think I am…" Ron spoke up.

"Oh. Sorry" Hermione said, not really sorry at all. Ron had been unrightfully accusing of her, and she wasn't the least bit regretful about laughing with Hannah over his ridiculous jealousy.

Hannah, deciding to leave the pair of them alone together, left the multi-house common room, her blonde hair swinging behind her.

* * *

The next morning, Hannah walked past the multi-house common room on the way to the Great Hall. Seeing Ron and Hermione exit the room together, she wondered mischievously to herself if the house-elves ever cleaned the couches in there. This wasn't the first time that a couple had spent the night there…in fact, this was a fairly normal occurrence amongst the sixth and seventh years.

In the Great Hall, she spotted fellow Hufflepuff seventh year, Lilah Moon, opening a large brown envelope. Hannah sat down beside her and helped herself to a bowel of CherriOwls and a glass of pumpkin juice.

"What's all that?" She asked Lilah, pointing at the many leaflets Lilah was now taking out of the envelope.

'They're for the Werewolf Rights Club." Lilah, along with her friend Serena Spinks, a Gryffindor, headed up the newly created Werewolf Rights Club at Hogwarts. The response to this movement was quite positive, and had far more members and interest than Hermione Granger's S.P.E.W (though Lilah alone also sympathized with Hermione's cause).

"You're going to the meeting tonight, right?" Lilah asked Hannah, sorting through the WULF (World United for Lycanthropy Foundation) and HOWL (Help give Occupations to Werewolves League) leaflets that had been sent to her.

Hannah nodded. She supported Lilah's cause, even though she was often too busy with homework and prefect duties to attend the meetings regularly.

"Will there be chocolate?" Hannah asked.

"Of course." Lilah grinned. "It's in Lupin's classroom, isn't it?"

Lilah, finished with her toast, placed the leaflets back inside the envelope and scanned the Gryffindor table behind them for Serena Spinks. A head of thick, fiery, tomato-red hair was sitting very close to a boy in Ravenclaw robes who had a lighter shade of red hair.

_Of course_, Lilah thought, rolling her eyes as her friend started snogging with the boy, Ryan Runcor. She didn't really want to disturb them…she hesitated, playing with her own curly, blonde hair for a moment. Thankfully, Serena broke away from her boyfriend for a moment and looked up, spotting Lilah standing up over at the Hufflepuff table. She waved to her and Lilah hurried over.

"Did you get them?" Serena said excitedly, pointing to the brown envelope in Lilah's hand. "Are those the leaflets?"

Lilah nodded.

"Just came this morning." She said.

"Great! I've got the order of buttons up in my room, they came last night." Serena stood up. "They're really great; they flash about 3 different slogans. Come on, I'll show you."

With that, the pair of them hurried out of the Great Hall, past a group of Slytherins who were talking in the entrance hall.

"Oh, move out of the way…!" Serena said as she pushed past a stringy boy and a tall brunette girl.

* * *

"Ergh…I wouldn't touch that if I were you, Pansy." A Slytherin girl with bleach-blonde hair, Daphne Greengrass, said as her friend reached for Draco Malfoy's black umbrella. "He's been letting that ugly _mudblood_ Granger near it."

"What?!" Pansy said, shocked. She turned to Draco. "Is this true? You've been letting that bushy-haired know-it-all use your umbrella? I don't _believe_ you, Draco!"

"What…it's not like I _wanted_ Granger standing under it, she practically _forced_ herself on me…" said Draco, wondering how many people had seen the pair of them standing under the same umbrella yesterday when they were watching over first years. "…I would have cursed her if McGonagall hadn't been staring straight at us when she did it. You know how a detention would have taken away from our date time, Pan."

Pansy cooed, but was still a little upset with him.

"…I thought that was _our_ umbrella, Drake" She said.

The stringy boy, Nott, and the tall brunette, Sophie Roper, looked uncomfortable. They hated it when Pansy and Draco started using pet names for each other.

"Alright there, So-So" Nott whispered jokingly to Sophie.

"Great, 'Dore" She mocked back.

Close behind them, Tracey Davis dissolved in giggles.

"Come on you guys, let's go before Draco and Pansy start shagging each other." said Tracey, flipping her highlighted brown hair and heading out to the courtyard. Nott and Sophie followed her, leaving Draco and Pansy to bicker and swoon while Daphne watched, collecting gossip on the pair.


	2. Potions and Fruit Newts

"What is Loony _doing_?" Nott wondered to Sophie and Tracey as he spotted Luna Lovegood across the courtyard. She was standing on a bench and looking straight up at what appeared to be the sun through her fingers. 

Apparently, Nott was not the only one wondering what lunatic thing Luna was up to this time. Two seventh year Ravenclaw girls, blonde Lisa Turpin and brown-haired Mandy Brocklehurst approached her.

"Why are you staring at the sun?" asked Mandy, knowing full well that the answer was going to be something blibbering, no doubt.

"I'm looking for Durflies," said Luna, serenely. "They're sun-spirits, a bit like dragonflies. But they can only be seen on Monday mornings, you know."

Mandy held back a snort.

"But that can't be good for your eyes, looking straight at the sun." Lisa said, trying to be more polite than Mandy.

"Yes, I know." Luna said, hopping down from the bench. "I do wish I knew a spell for sunglasses…"

Luna walked off towards the Library, her earrings (which looked very much like overlarge CherriOwls) swinging wildly.

* * *

With about 10 minutes left until the first class of the day started (for Luna, it would be Ancient Runes), Luna arrived in the library. There weren't very many people in the library at this hour, except for those finishing up homework they forgot to do the night before.

Deciding that a spell to create sunglasses would probably be found in the Charms section, she headed in that direction, walking past a table containing Seamus Finnegan, Sally-Ann Perks, and Dean Thomas, who were all frantically scribbling down rushed essays for whatever their first class happened to be that day.

Sally-Ann, a Hufflepuff in the year above Luna, got up to fetch yet another teetering pile of books from the Potions section. She had yet to find any that properly described the effects of powdered Runspoor scales.

"Do you know what Runespoor scales do?" She asked Dean desperately.

"No," He answered absently, still having another 6 inches to go on his own essay. "I'm not in NEWT Potions…"

She flipped to the page in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them about Runespoors, and scribbled off something completely made-up about 'giving the drinker the ability to decide to criticize dreams' just before the first bell signaled. Sally-Ann knew she would probably be getting a 'P' for this, but it would be better than a detention or a 'T' if she didn't complete the essay at all. She shoved the books that were hers back inside of her bag and headed off to the dungeons for Potions, wondering if her guess was anywhere close to what Runespoor scales actually did

* * *

_A/N: sings…You messed up in potions yesterday…but everyone still think's you're really great, 'cept Snape…_

A pile of simmering dark blue liquid sat in Sally-Ann's cauldron. She stared boredly into it, wondering if it might be useful as a hair dye. Sally-Ann was never really interested in potions, and hoped only to be able to scrape an 'A' on her Potions NEWT. Glancing around the room to see that no one was looking at her, she dipped a strand of her dark blondish hair into the potion to test out her question….nothing really happened. She sighed, and wondered if she should have left it in longer…

Sitting next to her was someone else who didn't take Potions class very seriously, Serena Spinks. The pair of them instinctively chose the table at the back of the class, furthest from Snape's desk, at the start of the year. Sitting with them as well were Ravenclaw Morag MacDougal and Hufflepuff Stephen Cornfoot, but both of them took the class a bit more seriously than Serena or Sally-Ann did.

Bored, as their potions would take 12 minutes to simmer before they could do anything else to them, Serena took out a pack of Fruit Newts from her bag and began to eat. As she bit the head off of a purple Newt, she noticed that Blaise Zabini, who was sitting directly in front of her, had his head turned away from his simmering cauldron and was talking with Millicent Bullstrode. Serena had never really liked Blaise… she could hear him whispering something stupid to Millicent which involved the words 'half-breed' and 'mudblood'. Millicent laughed at whatever his joke was supposed to be and the pair continued to chat.

Serena nudged Sally-Anne.

"I wonder how pink Fruit Newt mixes with Memory Potion…" Serena said mischievously, scanning the room to see Professor Snape still berating Harry Potter about something.

"Oh, is that what we're making?" Sally-Anne, who had forgotten what type of potion they were even brewing today, looked up.

Serena ignored this, and hovered a pink Fruit Newt directly into Blaise's cauldron.

A number of yellow bubbles and loud pink sparks erupted from his cauldron. He spun around in surprise.

Snape walked over to him, a look of displease on his face.

"I would expect better potion-making skills than this from someone in my own house." said Snape.

"I didn't…I don't know how this happened!" Blaise yelped in confusion, trying to silence the sparks with his wand.

Snape peered into the mess and scooped out a small candy with a stir-stick.

"A Fruit Newt, Zabini? You do know, that you are not allowed to eat in this classroom by now?"

"It's not mine!" Blaise looked around him. Behind him, Serena was grinning far too much at his situation. "I bet _she_ did it, the wolf-loving blood traitor!"

Serena scowled at him, then rolled her eyes.

Snape turned to her.

"Is this true? You've been throwing _Fruit Newts_ into Blaise's cauldron…_and_ eating in my class?"

"You can't prove it was me." Serena said, calmly, feigning innocence.

"I can't?" said Snape, pointing his wand in her direction. "Accio Fruit Newts!"

The offending package flew out of Serena's bag and into Snape's hand. He bore down on her.

"Do you realize what kind of serious harm you could have done Zabini-?" Snape started.

"I know, I know…but it didn't!" Serena said, both happily and defiantly.

Every single Hufflepuff and Gryffindor in the room broke out in laughter. A few Ravenclaws joined in, while others looked disapproving at her.

"That is beside the point…detention, and 20 points from Gryffindor for your actions. See me after class to arrange the time and punishment."

"Like I want to do _that"_ She whispered to Sally-Ann. As Snape walked away, she stuck her tongue out at his back.


	3. Love and Chocolate

"…Scrubbing out cauldrons by hand." Serena repeated to Lilah during the end of Transfiguration class later that day. "But that's not the worst though; he said it would be 6:30 tonight to about _8:00_." 

Serena transfigured her own legs into a mermaid tail and then back again.

"I'm going to miss all of the meeting" She moaned, now readjusting the Werewolf Rights button pinned to her robes.

_It serves her right, that disruptive show-off_, Su Li, who had been in Potions with her earlier, thought to herself. Su had been one of the Ravenclaws who had given Serena a disapproving look after what Serena had done to Blaise's potion. Su didn't exactly like Blaise, but thought Serena had been quite out of line in doing that…along with the fact that the commotion caused her to accidentally drop too many beetle wings in her own potion, making it far less than perfect.

"Tonight? But that's the third evening in a _row_" Su overheard Ron Weasley say two rows ahead of her.

"It's not up to _me_ when Dumbledore decides we're supposed to watch over the study hall," Hermione said. "Besides, at least I'm with you, and not Malfoy."

"Yeah…" Ron said, picking up his bag as the bell rang and signaled the end of third period. "…not with Malfoy."

Ron liked having the power and status of a Prefect, but he disliked all of the duties he had to do as well. He motioned for Harry to go on ahead without him, and waited while Hermione placed her numerous books back into her bag. When she had finished, they headed off towards the Great Hall together.

"Wait…" Hermione said before they went in, pulling Ron towards a corner in the Entrance Hall. She wrapped her hands around his neck as he drew closer to her and the pair began to kiss passionately.

* * *

Although Ron and Hermione were both members of the Werewolf Rights Club, they, due to having to watch over the study hall, were unable to attend tonight's meeting. Their absence was hardly noticeable, however, as nearly 30 Gryffindors, Hufflepuffs, and Ravenclaws of varying years packed the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom.

In Serena's absence, Lilah began passing around the box of flashing pins.

"They flash three different things." She told everybody, pressing a purple one which was currently on 'Join the Were-Rights Club!'. In a moment, it turned yellow and read 'Equality Now!'.

Hannah Abbot, eating a bar of Honeyduke's finest chocolate, reached to take a green one reading 'I (heart) Wolves'.

"Ooh, I like this one." Said Tonks, who had came both for the meeting and to see Remus. She was seated on the arm of a chair, very close to Remus. She turned towards him, pinning the 'I (heart) Wolves' button to her jacket. "Isn't it perfect?!"

"Very." Lupin laughed, kissing her.

Luna Lovegood flipped through the book she had taken out of the library earlier today, '50 Clever Clothing Charms'.

"That's odd…" She whispered out loud, pinning a purple button to her belt loop, "There isn't a single thing for sunglasses."

Seamus Finnegan, who was seated atop the desk in front of Luna, turned around.

"Oy, I know one." He told her.

"What is it?" asked Luna.

"Er…hang on…I need a pair to do it."

"Well that's not very useful then…" Luna said dreamily, taking a bite out of a piece of white chocolate, "…unless you _do_ have one…"

Seamus shoved the rest of his Ferro Roche in his mouth and hopped off the desk. He walked over to were Lupin and Tonks were seated together on a chair to the side.

"Do either of you have sunglasses?" Seamus asked in his thick Irish accent.

"Oh, I think I do!" said Tonks, who had just turned her hair a long bluish-black.

Nearly falling off the arm of Lupin's chair where she was perched in the process, Tonks bent over to retrieve her purse from the floor. After a moment, she produced a pair of silvery purple sunglasses.

"Are these good?" She turned her hair shoulder-length and purple to match. "I don't know if they'd quite suite you."

"They're not for me." Seamus said, looking over at Luna, who was staring over at him with an interested expression on her face.

Tonks handed over the sunglasses, grinning.

"I think it might be _Luna Finnegan_…" She whispered to Remus as Seamus headed back to Luna.

Luna looked curiously at the pair of sunglasses.

"They're nice, but I don't want to take someone else's…" She said.

"You won't, not quite anyways…" Seamus tapped Tonk's sunglasses with his wand and muttered an incantation. Instantly, a second identical pair appeared, which he handed to Luna.

"Oh thanks!" She hugged him. They both broke off after a moment, uncomfortably, Seamus muttering something about having to return the original pair.

* * *

Near midnight, a tall sandy-haired shape crept down the hallway to the kitchens. The shape did not light his wand to keep from being caught out of bed after hours, and walked along by memory in the pitch blackness.

He collided with another, shorter, shape with long scraggly blonde hair. They both fell to the floor.

"Seamus?" The second shape asked.

"Luna?" asked the first.

Both silhouettes nodded pointlessly in the dark.

"What are you doing down here?" Seamus asked.

"On the floor? Or by the kitchens?" replied Luna, getting up. "I'm getting chocolate…I've just really been craving it since the meeting."

Seamus laughed.

"You just _had_ a load of chocolate." He said.

"Oh I know." Luna said airily, now tickling the pear in the portrait. "What are you getting?"

"Marshmallows."

"Like in Lucky Charms?"

Seamus ignored this, and followed her into the kitchens.

"Some chocolate please," Luna told a very sleepy-looking house-elf. "And marshmallows."

An idea occurred to Luna, she smiled and turned back to Seamus while the house-elf fetched their food.

"Ooh, we could make 'smores!" She said brightly.


	4. The 'I Hate Snape' Club

Heading down spiral marble stairs from the sixth-year Ravenclaw girls dormitory, Luna noticed a gaggle of giggling students over by the notice board. It appeared that sometime during the night, a sparkling purple sign had been pinned up which read: 

The 'I Hate Snape Club'

…_now a legitimate after-school activity!_

"I wish I knew who did this," Morag MacDougal said, smiling. "So I could praise them!"

"It had to be a Ravenclaw, It's in _our_ common room." A small second-year boy spoke up.

"No, not necessarily." Luna drifted over to the bunch. "Anyone clever enough to know the right answer to the door would be able to do it."

"Then we can rule out any Slytherins!" Morag laughed.

"Whoever it was was clever enough to charm the poster to sparkle…" a blonde fourth year girl, Orla Quirke, looked thrilled at the fact the sign was glittering.

Padma Patil, deciding against doing anything prefecty about the situation, rushed out of the room to tell her twin about the amusing sign. She found Parvati at the foot of the Grand Staircase, talking with Hufflepuff seventh year Megan Jones.

According to the pair of them, the posters had been found in the Hufflepuff _and_ Gryffindor common rooms this morning as well.

"They'd have to know how to get into all 3….I don't know who would even know that" Megan said, adjusting her dark brown ponytail.

"It would have to be a Gryffindor, I think." Said Parvati, scanning around her as though she might see whoever it was. "Because Ravenclaw doesn't have a password, really, you just have to be smart."

"Hufflepuff doesn't, either, exactly…" Megan said, looking at a group of Gryffindors. "So who do we know who's smart, mischievous, and hates Snape?"

"About every single one of them." Padma supplied.

Parvati, hungry, pushed open the door to the Great Hall and found a seat next to Ron Weasley, Dean Thomas, and Serena Spinks. They three of them appeared to be in a discussion over bungee jumping.

"That's mad…" Ron shook his head in disbelief. "You mean Muggles tie ropes around their ankles and jump off bridges _for fun_?"

"Well, it's not exactly a rope, it's sort of elastic…but you've got the idea, yeah." Dean nodded. "A cousin of mine went bungee jumping last summer, on a trip to New Zealand."

"I think it sounds like fun," Serena said, buttering toast. "I wonder it would work if you did it off of a broomstick…?"

"_Mental_…They haven't even got _magic_ if the rope breaks either…" Ron poured out a bowl of CherriOwls, still in amazement.

Lavender Brown joined the four, taking a seat beside Parvati.

"Do you think it's a real club?" She asked Parvati, thinking of the sign that appeared in their common room earlier. "With meetings?"

"No," Serena supplied, laughing. "Not really. But if you _want_ there to be-"

"Hang on," Parvati realized. "Did you do them?"

"I'm not telling…" Serena looked away, shaking her head. Of course, it _had_ been her; the Ravenclaw common room had been easy enough to answer, and she knew the proper way of getting into the Hufflepuff common room through Lilah…but she wasn't about to let anyone know this. _Hey,_ she thought, _Snape deserved to get a good laugh at him after putting me in detention and making me miss the meeting_.

Near the doorway, Serena spotted Su Li in conversation with Snape.

_Damn. That bloody rat_, Serena thought, rolling her eyes. _The lengths that girl would go just because she had a crush on her 'Sevy'…_

Severus Snape walked towards the Gryffindor table, looking livid. He had not seen actions like this since the Marauders.

"Serena _Spinks_…explain!" He said through gritted teeth, holding up a sparkling purple poster.

"Explain what? I don't who did that." Serena said calmly, with a convincing look of confusion on her face.

"You know, one _drop_ of veritiserum could have you spilling the truth." Snape said, eyeing her pumpkin juice.

"Isn't that illegal to do on students?" said Serena, looking up at him with another 'confused' expression on her face.

"I, much like yourself, think I may be _above_ certain rules." Snape scowled. "Hand over your wand."

"What?!" Serena said, shocked.

"_Now_."

Serena resentfully obliged. It wasn't as if her _wand_ held any evidence.

"Priori Incantatum!" Snape pointed his own wand at Serena's.

A ghostly figure of a teacup turning into a mouse erupted out of the end of Serena's wand. Snape, still dissatisfied, handed her wand back to her. He walked away towards the staff table. Having no real evidence that Serena had in fact been the culprit, he was unfortunately unable to punish her…_this time_. Looking over at Lupin, he was reminded forcefully of another quite mischievous female he had once taught…who had taken NEWT potions about as seriously as Serena did, changing her hair every few minutes at the back of class.

* * *

At the staff table, Professor Sprout was reading both a copy of The Daily Prophet and a Muggle newspaper with interest, flipping between the two. She turned and showed the full-page spread of the Muggle paper to Professor Flitwick.

"Look at this," She pointed to a picture of a Hippogriff in the Muggle paper, and read aloud a section of The Daily Prophet. "_Two photographs taken of Hippogriffs have appeared in the Muggle equivalent of 'The Quibbler', Weekly World News, as of recently. The culprit behind sending in the pictures is still unknown, but is in breech of the International Statue of Secrecy. Muggles seeing the paper have not been reported to be taking it seriously, however, as anything appearing in Weekly World News is quite often seen as a joke._"


	5. Likably Loony

In the first period of the day, Charms, Draco Malfoy attempted to charm his apple to sing, but was unsuccessful again. He heard a chorus of 'Do The Hippogriff' and glanced across the room; Hermione (of course) was successfully making her orange hum yet another tune. He watched her for a moment, wondering how she, a mudblood, was doing better than himself, a pureblood. He was nudged by Pansy, whose own apple was singing a very patchy song which Draco didn't recognize. 

"What are you looking at _her_ for?" Pansy asked.

"No reason…" said Draco, "Trying to cheat, I suppose."

"Why don't you try to cheat off me?" Pansy cooed. "I've got it down."

Pansy's apple let off a shrill, cracked, note and began to smoke. She waved her wand to silence it and turned back to Draco.

"I know one charm you're good at." She whispered to him, placing her hand on his leg.

Draco slid his arm around her waist.

"Let's go to that place by the lake." He said.

After class, Draco and Pansy hurried to the side of the lake, to a spot they knew of that was concealed in tall bush. They knelt down, arms around each other, lips locked. Pansy's cloak fell to the ground. She took her wand out of her pocket; Draco drew out his wand as well.

"Engorgio." They both whispered, pointing to the proper spots on their bodies.

Pansy's dark hair flew backwards, pulling off her blouse with a bit of difficulty; Draco undid his trousers, relieved. They fell onto each other rambunctiously; the surrounding bushes rustling as the pair moved in passion.

A bell sounded across the ground nearly ten minutes later. Covered in twigs and dirt, they undid the Engorgement charms, satisfied. Pansy lay in grassy sand, reluctantly pulling her clothing back on. Draco, who had done the same, kissed her swiftly before heading back to the castle, his hair severely ruffled.

"Looks like the _Drapery_ have been going at it again!" Seamus nudged Ginny Weasley as they passed Draco.

"Ooh, look!" Ginny pointed to where Pansy was now emerging from the brush with a twig stuck in her hair and giggled. "I wonder why they have to hide out in the bushes always, anyways."

Seamus shrugged.

"Privacy? Or maybe they just like doing it in front of the Giant Squid…." He said.

"Maybe 'Pan-Pan's' hoping for a little Squiddy ménage…" Ginny broke off, thinking of the Jr. Death Eater, his girl, and the Giant Squid rolling around in the shallows.

_A/N: There probably _is_ a fanfic about this somewhere lol…_

They both laughed as Ginny started impersonating Pansy snogging the Giant Squid.

"Oh, Squiddy! You're _such_ a better kisser than Draco!" Ginny squealed.

"What?" Harry came up behind them, only catching the end of Ginny's sentence.

"Nothing," Ginny laughed. "We're just talking about 'Drake', 'Pan', and dear Squiddy getting it on by the lake…"

Seamus walked off to Care of Magical Creatures as Ginny began to explain. He spotted Luna's class just leaving; she waved to him, sporting the purple sunglasses with pride.

"You like them, I see." Seamus hurried over to Luna.

"Oh, yes!" Luna said. "I'll have to wait until next week to look for Durflies again…but they're really nice."

"Durflies?" Seamus repeated. He had never heard of a 'Durfly' before, though he was nearly certain that a full description of them would be found on page seven of this month's edition of The Quibbler.

Luna nodded.

"Sun-Spirits, which can only be seen on Monday mornings. Not very many people have heard of them, though."

_She was loony_, Seamus thought, _but likeably just loony enough._

"Well, I'll keep a lookout then." He said, as she smiled, heading off to her next class.

_A/N: I know, this chapter is __**really** short, but I thought I might was well upload whatever I've written that's just sitting here...not sure what to do next...something...I'm starting another fanfic as well. _


	6. Cruel To Be Kind

As it was hard to see, Luna removed her sunglasses once she entered the castle. She hurried up the Grand Staircase towards her NEWT Charms class, brushing past a disheveled Draco Malfoy on the way.

* * *

Draco, unaware of his ruffled appearance, slid into the back of Transfiguration moments before the final bell rang. Two Ravenclaw girls gawked at him, one nudged the pair inform of them and whispered something. Soon several people were staring in his direction. He glared back, mouthing a haughty 'what?'.

"Pass your parchment on the 1960's mermaid Transfiguration incident at Loch Ness to the front…" McGonagall began.

Draco removed his assignment from his bag, passing it forwards up the row through Serena, who was seated, to his dismay, in front of him. He hoped the nutter wouldn't _vanish _the thing or something before passing it on. To his pleasement, however, he distinctly saw two rolls of parchment, including his own, be passed on to Hermione Granger.

As Hermione turned to retrieve the rolls from Serena, she glanced at the pieces of grass in Draco's hair and the leaf on his robes and smirked, rolling her eyes slightly. She passed three rolls on to Quiterie Rivers and turned back in the direction of Serena and Draco.

"Did you see his hair?" Serena whispered quietly to Hermione, who nodded.

"_Brilliant_ thing to do during break." whispered Hermione, sarcastically.

_I wish Ron and I would do that on our break…_Hermione thought, though, as she glanced over at the redhead next to her longingly.

After class, Hermione approached Draco, who had still taken no notice of the plantlife in his hair. She decided _not_ to tell him.

"We have Head duties later." She told him, "Dumbledore wants us to look for that portrait of Constance Vladimir; he said there's been complaints from some of the other portraits about him."

"Complaints? What does a _portrait_ have to complain about?" asked Draco, confused.

"Mostly that he's been missing from his own frame for a month and keeps going into other's frames uninvited. We're supposed to track him down."

"And just _why_ would he think that I've got the time to go searching an entire bloody castle for this man?"

"Stop whining, he's supposed to be somewhere on the fourth floor."

Draco snorted, folding his arms.

"This better not take too long." He said regally.

Hermione turned to leave.

"Nice hair, by the way." She shot.

Draco, confused, touched his hair. He pulled out a blade of grass and a twig, fuming, and watched a head of bushy hair head through the doorway.

* * *

As the evening drew on, Hermione and Draco found themselves in a darkened fourth-floor corridor. They had been at the search for near and hour with no luck.

"Are you _sure_ that guy's supposed to be on this floor" Draco asked her wearily.

Hermione scanned the three portraits to her left and turned towards him.

"No." she admitted. She was finding this search just a bit annoying. _Surely a man like Dumbledore would be able to cast some sort of spell to find it himself?_

Draco raised his eyebrows. He started walking towards a rather large painting of a witch surrounded by a meadow forest.

"Excuse me, but have _you_ perhaps seen a man named Constance?" He asked in a bossy manner.

"There's no need to be rude" The witch replied airily. She had long reddish blonde hair in which she wore a tiara of twigs.

"Well have you seen him?" Draco asked again with impatience.

"You know, I'd expect Dumbledore to choose someone with a better attitude for Head Boyship." She spotted the badge upon his robes. Peering past him, she saw Hermione scanning a row of paintings. "Who's your girlfriend?"

"She's not my girlfriend! She's not even a friend!" said Draco quickly, hoping the Mud…_Muggleborn_, he actually corrected himself for the first time without knowing why, wasn't hearing any of this. This portrait was obviously going to be no help to him, and he walked back over to Hermione.

"Come on, let's try a different floor."

"I think we should too, he might have moved again." Hermione agreed. "How about the seventh? There's a lot of portraits along one of the corridors up there."

Draco nodded, and they headed upstairs. A girl older than themselves with black hair that was streaked with strands of pink passed Hermione and Draco on the swiveling staircase.

"Who is she?" asked Draco, curious. It wasn't very often one would see former students hanging around the castle. She looked to be about 19; at least out of Hogwarts for two years.

Hermione shrugged. She thought the girl looked the same age that Angelina Johnston would be by now, but she was pretty certain, as Hermione didn't recognize her, that the girl was not a Gryffindor.

They arrived on the landing of the seventh floor. Hermione thought for a moment (because of the pink) that the girl might be Tonks in heavy disguise, but quickly discarded this theory. _For one_, Hermione thought, _Tonks wouldn't need to be in disguise if she's just here to see Lupin, and for another, well, she was just here yesterday, anyways_. _And…the girl didn't carry herself the same way as Tonks._

"So where is that corridor?" Draco impatiently asked Hermione, who looked lost in thought.

"Straight ahead and down the left." She pointed and began to walk. Draco followed.

"Isn't this right by the-" Draco started.

"Room of Requirement? Yes."

There was indeed the signature tapestry of a wizard being clubbed by trolls. The pair searched through the paintings down past the Room.

"Do you think we could use the _Room_ to find him?" Draco paused infront of where the door generally appeared.

"I don't think it will work, but you can try." Hermione was unsuccessful with any of the portraits in that hallways.

Draco paced as he knew how, concentrating on what he hoped to find. A wooden door emerged from the wall and they stepped into the Room. It was moderately small and seemed to contain only a table holding a small crystal object.

Hermione gaped.

"A Revealaorb! Why didn't anyone think of that!" She exclaimed.

"_I_ did. And _you'd_ have us search the mundane way." Draco said, picking up the orb. "Now who's the smart one?"

"Still me." Hermione rolled her eyes.

"You wish." Draco smirked.

"Do I?" Hermione folded her arms and raised her eyebrows.

They both stood close over the Revealaorb. They caught each other's eye briefly.

"Show us where Constantine Vladamire's portrait is." Hermione ordered it.

A hazy image appeared in the crystal. A man who looked quite vampirish stood in a frame of a kitchen.

"That's on the second floor!" In that moment, Hermione could have hugged Draco. She winced at image which now flashed in the orb.

"It works telepathically, too." Draco whispered close to her ear. The image had amused him. _Who'd have thought that Hermione had been wondering _that_ image?_

His breath on her ear made Hermione shudder. Her eyes met his. Her hand wandered over to his side.

"I…forgot…" She was blushing slightly. Draco placed his own hand on top of hers. His other hand found his way over to her back.

"The Room of Requirement…this is so…" Hermione started as Draco's hand moved downwards.

"Cliché?" Draco laughed. Their eyes were now inches from each other…_I'm supposed to hate her._

Hermione moved her other hand onto his flesh under his shirt…_I'm supposed to hate him._

They moved even closer; their lips now together, opened, eyes closed. _This is so wrong, _they both though as their tongues explored each others mouths, and hands each other's bodies, _but feels so good_. Draco licked her ear, moving down to her neck…a shiver shot through Hermione. The room, sensing her desire, materialized a bed directly behind her. Hermione slyly pulled Draco onto it, her hands now on his thighs.

A clatter of voices rose from outside the door; the pair shot bolt upright. Draco walked to the door and peered out a crack; a small pack was headed in their direction, with obvious intent on using the room. _Damn it_, he thought. Hermione appeared next to him, leaning against his shoulder.

"Now what?" She whispered fearfully.

"We run." Draco started to move.

She pulled him back, shaking her head. Hermione cast a disillusionment charm on them both.

"_Now_ we run." She said.


	7. Time Bomb

Lilah Moon, followed by Luna Lovegood and Serena Spinks, approached the Room of Requirement. It had been completely Lilah's idea for the attempt, though she knew Luna would be of great assistance. None of them had noticed two disillusioned bodies fleeing the Room moments earlier. 

"You never explained just what this thing we're looking for does…" Serena said confused.

"The Room? Well it can do almost anything." Luna supplied.

"No, not the _Room_, I know what that does…what exactly does this Tar-thing do?"

Lilah turned.

"You've never watched Muggle television, have you?" Lilah said. "The TARDIS can go anywhere through space and time; thousands of years into the future, the past, onto another planet…"

"And…the Room's supposed to supply us with a fictional time machine, then?" Serena raised her eyebrows skeptically at her Muggle-Born friend.

"We won't know if we don't try." Luna spoke in a determined manner, and then turned to Lilah. "It usually shows up in London, doesn't it?"

"For some reason, yes…it's always _London_ they turn up in on earth. Of course, there isn't really a Doctor, but I think, if the Room _can_ give us whatever we want, we should be able to will a kind of a TARDIS of our own."

Lilah began to pace in front of where the door should be, visualizing a real, working, blue phone box TARDIS. The usual wooden Room of Requirement door appeared, and the trio stepped inside.

"Did it work?" asked Luna, shutting the door behind them.

"Is that it?" Serena pointed in amazement to a blue Police Call Box which stood in the corner of the room.

Lilah gasped. She hadn't really expected it to work, especially as TARDIS's were born, rather than made. _Didn't there need to be a Time Lord around here too? _she thought. She pushed open the Call Box door. It was quite like walking into a wizarding tent, much bigger in the inside than it appeared on the outside. It was, as Lilah had seen on TV, sort of glowing and goldish; filled with devices, leavers, and buttons.

"Well go on! Let's take it for a ride somewhere!" Serena encouraged, examining the center controls of it. "Oh, let's see what it's like in the year 3000…in another galaxy!"

Lilah looked over to the center, and then back to the others. She cringed.

"I've only just realized…" Lilah began to laugh, "I don't actually know how to work this thing."

"I'm pretty fair at a broomstick…it shouldn't be too hard to fly. You must have seen them pull a switch or push a certain button somewhere." Serena began to attempt to see if any of the devices possibly carried instructions on them.

"I wonder…" Luna was staring at the tube in the center. "Do you think we can will _people_ into the Room? I mean, not real people, but _fictional_ characters might work."

"Like…The Doctor?" Lilah said. "That's a brilliant idea! Which one do you want? The newest one?"

"Does it matter?" Serena asked.

"No." said Lilah. "Luna, you know what he looks like, right? Help me on this…I think we should try from outside of the TARDIS, though."

Luna and Lilah stepped outside. They smiled at each other, this was absolute nuts, really.

Nothing happened.

"Anything from in there?" Lilah called to Serena. _Perhaps he had appeared inside of the ship?_

"No…but I think," Serena pulled out her wand from her pocked. She ran it through her fiery hair for a second before pointing it towards a few wires. "…come in here, I want to try something!"

The two blondes hurried into the TARDIS, shutting the door behind them. Serena held her yew wand close to the wire. She didn't have any idea what one would do with Muggle technology, but this wasn't exactly Muggle…

"Rennervate!" Sparks shot through the wires. The TARDIS gave off a faint hum and lit up. She turned to the others. "I think we just needed to turn it on."

Luna beamed.

"Should we just start pressing random things?" she asked.

* * *

Hours later, they were no closer to getting the TARDIS to work. _Surely something should have made it travel by now_, Lilah thought, as she flipped and held a small leaver. Luna was bent down on the floor, peering through the floorboard, as if searching for the heart. Meanwhile, Serena was shooting her wand off at any random wire or device she saw.

"Mobilli..TARDIS!" Serena flicked her wand at the large tube in the center. "Should we just sleep in here? It must be about 2am by now…"

Serena sunk down onto the floor across from Luna. Lilah sat down as well on the other side. _It's not the most comfortable thing…_Serena sprawled out and stretched; her foot kicking a switch in the process.

* * *

The unfamiliar girl hovered just past the doorway of the Great Hall the next morning. She was no longer a student, but she would feel ridiculous sitting with the teachers. Scanning the Hall for the hopeless possibility of seeing anyone she knew, she tried to sit down inconspicuously at the end of the Hufflepuff table, her old house. Trying to look both friendly, but unnoticeable, she reached for a piece of toast from the large silver tray in front of her and knocked a box of Pixie Puffs over with her elbow as she did. Colorful cereal puffs cascaded onto a third year's plate of eggs; who glanced up. The pink-streaked brunette cringed.

"You're like Professor Lupin's girlfriend," the third year, Rose Zellar, laughed as she picked out the puffs from her eggs, "She does that a lot too, knocking over things like that."

"Lupin's back?" the girl glanced towards the staff table in surprise.

"Yes, he's been back all year…where've you been?" Rose said. "What was your name, anyways?"

"Linae; Linae Moon…I'm actually here to be an assistant for Ancient Runes for a little while, to learn to teach, and to help with whatever I can. I graduated from Hogwarts two years ago."

"I'm in Study of Ancient Runes this year! As well as Divination and Care of Magical Creatures. Most people just pick two, but I wanted to take all three of them." Rose said happily. She checked her watch. "Divination starts in about ten minutes, I should get up there…see you around!"

With that, Rose picked her bag off from the floor and headed off. Linae again looked up at the staff table at Lupin. She was quite grateful he was here again.


	8. The CrossCrossover

Serena Spinks woke up to a knocking sound. She forgot for a moment that they had fallen asleep inside of the TARDIS and was slightly surprised when she heard Lilah's voice call over to her and Luna.

"Oh…my God. You've got to see this…" Lilah had her face pressed against the window of the TARDIS door.

Both Serena and Luna hurried over to her. Lilah opened the door, stepping out in awe. They appeared to no longer be in the Room of Requirement, but in…

"Cardiff." Luna mouthed, looking around the paved area outside of the Police Call Box. She gasped, and exclaimed, "Torchwood!"

"What?" Serena spun around as Luna took off running to find who knows what.

"Was that Loony Lovegood?" An all-too familiar voice to Lilah spoke, stepping out from behind the tall glass…thingy…a few feet from the TARDIS.

"You're…you're real?" Lilah stared in amazement at the Tenth Doctor.

"Of course I am, we're in the crossover part of this fic!" he said, looking between the curly-haired blonde and the fiery redhead. "Who are you two?"

"We're OCs…loosely based on Cannon (but not written about) last names." Serena supplied. "Serena Spinks and Lilah Moon."

"Moon…wasn't that name sorted in the first book?"

"You've read the books?" Serena said, surprised.

"Of course he has…he told Martha he cried reading book 7." Lilah paused, then looked around. "Where is she, anyways?"

"Who knows…I'm between seasons at the moment. Spoilers say she'll turn up again mid-season." The Doctor turned to his TARDIS. "How'd you lot get my TARDIS?"

"Room of Requirement." Lilah said. "Though I didn't think it would work….I mean, it _wasn't_ working…"

"Psychic box inside a psychic room?" Serena suggested. Her thick, layer-ey, fire-red hair seemed to bounce as she said this.

"Smart, fiery…" The Doctor turned and smiled at her. "I like you."

Lilah wandered over to the sidewalk where Luna had her ear pressed against one of the blocks of cement on the ground. Serena and The Doctor followed. Luna looked up at their arrival.

"I'm trying to find the lift." Luna said. "…I've always wanted to work for Torchwood…the new one, of course, the Cardiff branch with Jack and Gwen."

"Here…" Serena drew out her wand and muttered something inaudible. A square halo of blue light appeared over a piece of sidewalk two away from where Luna knelt. Serena turned and winked at The Doctor. "Who needs a screwdriver when you've got a wand?"

A scream issued from a pizza shop down the walkway. The four of them looked up and down the bay to see three youths fleeing the shop. One of them, a girl of about sixteen, had her hands covered over her eyes.

Serena cocked her head at The Doctor. "Seriously?!".

The four sprinted down the bay to the pizza shop. Lilah looked in through the window and then up at the others. Inside the shop, two people were unconscious. A young man who appeared to have been working the till lay on the floor behind the counter, his head visible from the window, and a middle aged woman was sprawled over a table of bread. Neither appeared to be bleeding or otherwise injured.

"Should we go in?" Lilah asked. Luna peered in the opposite direction.

"We should follow those three." Luna said, pointing far down the way.

"You two," The Doctor motioned at Luna and Lilah, "Go after them. We'll take a look in here."

"There's no need." A fifth voice, a male, spoke from behind them. "We got it all on CCTV."

Luna squealed like an exited fangirl. Jack Harkness and Gwen Cooper stood behind them.

"A double-crossover!" The Doctor exclaimed.

"A what?" Gwen asked, confused.

"This chapter, it's a cross-crossover." He explained. "My show, your show, and Harry Potter. This author's got a lot of fandoms…next you know the TARDIS'll end up at Seattle Grace."

"But we're in the same world…technically." Gwen said.

The Doctor shrugged.

"CCTV…" He looked over at Jack.

* * *

"I've _always_ wanted to ride this!" Luna said as they stepped onto the piece of sidewalk. The lift began to descend. As there was six of them, it was rather squished. Serena was pressed up against The Doctor, which she didn't mind at all.

"Is it…_you_?" she whispered, referring to the fact that some sort of a crisis nearly always happened whenever he was around.

"Dunno…maybe it is." He said back quietly, knowing exactly what she meant. "So how did you get the TARDIS to work?"

"I'm not sure…I know how I got it to turn on though." She laughed and pulled her wand out of her jeans pocket. "We were asleep when it traveled."

"Luna," The Doctor peered over Serena's head at Luna Lovegood, who was in the process of telling Jack about Wrackspurts. "Were you dreaming of Cardiff last night?"

"I might have been." She said airily, before returning to her conversation with Jack, now on about Nargles.

Serena pressed her face into The Doctor's chest to keep Luna from overhearing her giggling. She paused, and drew her head backwards.

"You have two hearts…Lilah never told me that about you." She said slightly surprised. Her jade green eyes met his brown ones for a moment. The lift shuddered to a stop; Gwen and Lilah, who had been squished into the most uncomfortable positions out of everyone, got off of it relieved.

"How's the footage?" Jack yelled over to Toshiko, who was in front of several CCTV screens.

"It's good," she replied, looking over at the new arrivals. "We've got the entire incident captured, and I can locate where those three are now."

All crowded around the screen, watching the pizza shop footage play out.

_The three teenagers who had been spotted fleeing entered the shop. The tallest, a male, whispered something to the second oldest, a female with longish, wavy hair. She stepped into the queue as the others waited, looking at various baked goods. Without looking up at the clerk, the girl gave her order._

"_Two large pizzas." She said, staring at the floor._

"_What kind?" the cashier asked._

"_Er…fully-loaded, supreme, just…whatever you have." She said, flustered. _

_The clerk said something about selecting toppings from the number board. She reluctantly looked up at it, covering her face with her hands and peering through the gaps._

"_What're you playing at?" he asked her, confused by her behavior. _

"_Nothing. I'll get a number one." She reached into her pocket for the money, handing it to him, one hand still covering her eyes. Five minutes later, he returned with her pizza, placing it on the counter. Through a crack between her fingers, she looked over at the pizza to pick it up. In half a second, the cashier had been struck unconscious._

"_Damn it!" The girl winced, and picked up the pizza one handedly. _

_The tall boy spun around and looked over at the sound of the crash. At this moment, the middle aged woman collapsed into the table full of bread. Someone from within the shop screamed. The three teens fled out the doors, the girl carrying both pizzas appeared to be crying as she ran._

"We've got to find them." Serena said.


	9. Medare

In an alleyway about a mile from Torchwood, the six, Serena, Luna, Lilah, Gwen, Jack, and The Doctor, approached a tall wooden fence. Three voices could be heard on the other side, and a distinct sound of someone sobbing. 

"I said it would be stupid…we shouldn't have tried..." They heard the voice of the older girl say.

"We have food now, and they'll wake up in a month or so; I don't think either of you had contact for too long of a time." An unfamiliar female voice, belonging to the youngest of the three, spoke.

"Medaré…" The Doctor whispered to the other five, realizing what the three teens were. "Don't look them in the eyes."

"Are they alien?" Gwen asked.

He shook his head.

"Ancient Greek species, I didn't know they were still around on earth," he said, pressing his ear to the fence. "They're where the Medusa legends came from…any eye contact with one of them will knock you out for…about a month, maybe years if they're really trying."

"Oh, like a Basilisk!" Lilah exclaimed, "Only not as bad…"

"Well how do we get over to them without getting knocked out by them?" Luna asked, her eyes flickering to the top of the fence.

"Protego Maxima?" Serena suggested, wand raised and eyes gleaming.

"Brilliant!"

Jack began to hoist Gwen to the top of the tall fence to look for a way around. Serena pointed her wand and nonverbally conjured her most powerful of shielding spells to form in front of Gwen's face.

"See anything?" Jack asked her.

"There's a door to the left, we could go in by-"

She gave a small gasp and began to fall backwards, limp, and lay unconscious in Jack's arms. Jack looked up from Gwen over Serena, slightly accusatory.

"I held most of it off… she should probably wake up in about five minutes." Serena strained.

"What the _hell_, Reim!" The teenage boy on the opposite side of the fence exclaimed.

"I don't know, I panicked! Who was she?" The younger girl, Reim, said, flustered.

"It doesn't matter," The boy sighed, "We have to move again…"

Without hardly thinking, Serena grabbed the two closest people who were both conscious and not holding someone unconscious, Luna and The Doctor, and apparated onto the other side of the fence.

"Well you're random."

"A bit."

Luna stepped away from the two.

"Who are you? Really…we don't want to hurt you." Luna said to the three Medaré, her eyes open, but staring at the sky. She found her way to sit beside the still-sobbing girl, Lillie. "I think we're a little different than the Muggles, too."

"Muggles…" Lillie said. "Are you a witch? Can you help us…I just, it's just…"

Lillie began to cry again, her eyes were well hidden behind her thick, long, dark blonde hair.

"We're Medaré, there aren't very many of us left in the world…I don't think any more than just us in the UK." The tall, brown-haired seventeen year old boy, Travor, spoke up, keeping his eyes shut as he turned his face in the direction of Serena and The Doctor. "You obviously know that it's eye contact by now, right? If we look another Medaré in the eyes, they'll be stunned for maybe a minute or two, but humans could be months or years."

"Humans…" The Doctor said, pondering, "What about aliens, wizards….Time Lords?"

"_Anything_ non-Medaré." Travor said flatly. "It doesn't matter. Humans, animals, whatever a Time Lord is, it's all the same."

Luna was struck by an idea she had seen in a movie a long time ago.

"Do sunglasses help?" She asked, removing the purple pair from her jacket pocket and holding them out to Lillie.

"Yes, they do. They don't _stop_ it from happening, but it'll lessen the effects by a lot." Lillie looked at the pair. "But those ones are no good…they have to be _really_ dark."

Luna looked over to Serena. She still had no idea how to produce sunglasses herself. Serena, whose eyes had been open the entire time, smiled and wordlessly conjured three very dark-lensed pairs. She handed a pair each to Travor and Riem, who put them on immediately, before turning to Lillie.

"Thanks." Lillie said, graciously, before taking the pair. "We're really lucky you lot found us."

Lillie opened her eyes with relief as she put on the sunglasses. In a second between Lillie opening her eyes and Serena closing hers, their eyes met. Instantly, Serena collapsed to the side. She was caught quickly by The Doctor, but remained unconscious, her fire-red hair flopping limply into her face as he held her semi-upright.

"How long?!"

"I don't know…a few hours? A few days?" Lillie said panicky, looking at Serena's unconscious, flopped, body, though being certain to avoid his, or anyone else's, eyes.

"Alohamora!" The door to the left in the alley opened, revealing the others who had not been apparated to the other side. Lilah had her wand out and obviously had just unlocked the door, while Jack appeared to be still carrying Gwen, who was as flopped in his arms as Serena was against The Doctor's, though Gwen looked like she was finally beginning to stir.

"…What…" Gwen blinked, opening her eyes and spotting the others. "What happened to her?"

"It looks like the same thing; she must have made eye contact." Jack helped her upright. "How much did she make?"

"About an hour to a day's worth, but she'll be alright." The Doctor looked down at Serena.

Luna, who had moved spots and now sat beside the fourteen year old, Reim, looked to the others.

"We should take them to Hogwarts." Luna said. "We might be able to look up a spell or a potion to properly help them."

"We don't need their help." Travor sat down wearily. "And we don't need anymore people panicking over us."

"Yes…we do." Reim said defiantly to her cousin. "You know how nice it would be to actually be able to look someone in the eyes?"

"By TARDIS, then?" Lilah looked over to The Doctor hopefully.

"How else." He held Serena, picking her up more, into a proper carrying position.

* * *

The nine of them piled into the TARDIS with quite a lot of room to spare. The Doctor lay Serena gently onto the floor before resuming the controls in the center.

"I can't wait to see Hogwarts for _real_." Gwen said, standing between Lilah and Jack. "All of that alien stuff...and I find _this_ amazing."


	10. New Moon

That Wednesday, just before noon, Linae Moon exited the Study of Ancient Runes classroom. For her first class as an assistant, it had gone fine. Brilliant, by any of her standards, really. It was Gryffindor and Ravenclaw 4th years, but none seemed to take any particular notice of her, which Linae was completely fine with. _Brilliant career choice_, She though sarcastically as she headed down a flight of spiral steps,_because you know it's only a matter of time until-_

About five stairs from the bottom, Linae tripped, though made a leap to catch herself from actually falling. She landed quite well on the landing at the bottom of the steps, aside from knocking into a glaring Slytherin girl.

"_You_ must be a_Mudblood_." The Slytherin girl shot annoyed at Linae.

"It's none of _your_business what my blood is." Linae turned back towards her before heading away. She was half-blood to be exact, but didn't think it mattered; her dad was Muggleborn.

Two corridors away, she spotted someone whom she had wanted to talk with all day. She hurried over to him as he exited his classroom.

"Professor Lupin!" She exclaimed. "You're back here…he hired you back. I always thought Hogwarts was going to be the only place we would…I guess that's a bit true now."

"I see you're back too." Lupin turned to her. "You've managed to avoid the registry, though; I've heard you aren't on it."

Linae stepped past him into the Defense Against The Dark Arts classroom, being sure the door was shut after Lupin followed back in.

"I've been really careful, _so_ secret about it." She told him. "I think hardly anyone knows except for you and Dumbledore. The last thing I want is to be known by the Ministry. It's not really fair, is it? I mean, 29-30 days out of the month we're able to work just like everyone else. I see absolutely no reason why the _Ministry_ seems to have it in their head that werewolves go around attacking the people in the cubicles next to them when it's half a month away from the full moon!"

"Your cousin seems to have the same ideas. She started up a Werewolf Rights Club this year."

"My _what_?" Linae said, surprised. She had not known she had any wizarding cousins.

"Lilah Moon," Lupin said. "She is related to you, right? There isn't physical resemblance, but you share the last name, and spirit."

"Moon…" Linae repeated, confused. "But that's impossible…my dad's Muggleborn, all of his relatives would be Muggles."

"In a lot of families which produce Muggleborns, there's often wizarding blood many generations back. It could be coincidence, though not many Wizards share a last name without being at least somewhat related...I believe Lilah is Muggleborn as well." Lupin explained.

"What does she look like?" Linae asked. "I could ask her if I see her. Do you know what house she's in?"

"Hufflepuff, like you were." He answered. "She's sort of tall, blonde curly hair, seventh year."

_Blonde?_ Linae though. _She seriously must have come from my dad's Caucasian side_. Linae was, herself, half Caucasian, a quarter Japanese, and a quarter Inuit, and looked like a mix of the three, except for her ice-blue eyes, which no one else in her family had.

"She was absent today…as was her friend." Lupin smiled slightly, remembering many missed classes he had had with Sirius and James.

After Linae left his classroom to head to the Great Hall, she scanned the hallways and staircases for anyone who looked like how Lupin had described. She instead came across a very sulky reddish blonde-haired Ravenclaw boy mentioning Lilah's name to a sandy haired Gryffindor boy, who appeared to only be mildly paying attention to him.

"…Well then she goes off with Lilah somewhere after dumping me…" The red-blonde haired boy, Ryan, continued to Seamus.

_Maybe she had a good reason for that,_ Seamus thought, having been listening to about ten minutes of him complain about how Serena had broken up with him last night.

"…Do you think she's snogging someone else? You'd know if you've seen her with someone in your common room…has she been?" Ryan asked him.

"Honestly, mate, I don't know." Seamus said exasperatedly. "I just want to know if you've seen Luna at all today? I wanted to ask her something."

" Loony? Not that I know of…why? Are you and her..?" Ryan asked.

"I…dunno…maybe we are. Do you know where she would be?" Seamus asked again.

"I swear she makes the quickest decisions…just the day before we were snogging and then that night she goes and…" Ryan, apparently ignoring Seamus' question, went on.

"You two were together for _two weeks_, mate, let it go." Seamus walked off, annoyed. He headed in the direction of the Great Hall.

"And _that_ is the reason why almost every Gryffindor/Ravenclaw relationship has ended badly." He came up to Linae, who he spotted earlier overhearing them. "They're ridiculously sulky sometimes."

Linae smiled at him.

"What house is your Luna in?" she asked.

"Ravenclaw…but she's not sulky, she's different than most of them." Seamus said. "You look sort of familiar…weren't you a Hufflepuff a few years ago?"

Linae nodded.

"And apparently I have a cousin in there too. Do you know Lilah Moon?"

"She started the Were-Rights club, you should join it if you've got time. I'm in it, as well as Luna. That's where we started talking to each other, really…I made her a pair of sunglasses..."

"I'll…look into that." Linae said as they descended onto the swiveling staircase down to lunch. She thought the Werewolf Rights club was a wonderful idea…it would give her a place to be vocal on issues without standing out as a Werewolf.

* * *

Quite later in the day, Seamus was still yet to see Luna. He returned to the Gryffindor common room and took a seat besides the fire. Grudgingly, he got to work on his Charms essay, which was due in the morning, though he still kept wondering what Luna had been doing all day. 


	11. Anything, Anything

  
It was not until late Thursday evening, over a day after Seamus had been wondering about Luna, that Nymphadora Tonks walked past the Room or Requirement. She had been taking a quick detour to the loo before seeing Remus that night when she heard a vaguely familiar sound come from within the room. It was a sort of a whooshing sound, a bit mechanical, but very unique. It sounded slightly like a rolling chair. She thought she might have heard it on Muggle television once, or else possibly someplace downtown in London. She opened the door to the Room a crack just as the sound died down and a blue telephone box materialized in the Room, accompanied by many voices inside of the box. Drawing her wand from the pocket of her jeans and brushing short strand of pink hair from her face, she stepped fully into the Room. 

"It really is Hogwarts…" a brunette with a thick welsh accent stepped out from the box and looked around in amazement.

"I wonder what part of the castle this is?" an American man followed her out of the blue police call box.

"Lilah said they came from the Room of Requirement," Gwen said, still looking fascinated. "This must be it again."

Lilah, along with two other teenagers whom Tonks didn't recognize, stepped out from the box as well. Lilah, who, unlike Gwen and Jack, was not busy being fascinated by the fact that they were at Hogwarts, spotted Tonks standing by the doorway, looking curiously at everything.

"Tonks!" Lilah exclaimed, rushing over to her. "How did you find…what day is it?"

"Thursday night. Where've you been? No one's seen you or Serena for two days…" Tonks replied. "Who are all they?"

"You see _that_ there," Lilah pointed to the police call box. "That's the_TARDIS_, the real thing, we-"

"Oh my God…" Gwen turned and finally noticed Tonks. "You're Nymphadora Tonks, aren't you? Wait..sorry, just 'Tonks', right?"

Tonks laughed and nodded.

"So what _is_ a TARDIS?" Tonks asked Lilah and Gwen, eying the box which Luna along with another unfamiliar teen was now exiting from.

"It's a time-travel…the Doctor, it can go-"

"Hang on…let me see this!" Tonks grinned mischievously and broke into a run towards the TARDIS and sprinted through the door just as it shut. She wasn't_incredibly_ amazed to find that it was bigger on the inside; that was fairly expected in the wizarding world, after all. But, bigger or not, it was still quite an impressive thing. Her eyes lit up when she spotted the Doctor and she ran across the TARDIS towards him excitedly. About half a second in, her foot caught on a ledge up and she tripped, falling rather un-gracefully to the floor.

"Damn it." She said, wincing at her horrible, though ridiculously laughably true, impression.

"Energetic, completely clumsy…bright pink hair," the Doctor walked over to where she was on the floor. "Tonks, is it?"

"Am really I that easy to tell?" Tonks looked up at him and turned her hair long and red.

"Well now you're just showing off." He laughed as he helped her up.

"Am I?" Tonks raised her eyebrows at him, she smiled and changed her hair to be shoulder-length and black. For effect, her nose became a duck-like beak for a moment.

About three feet away from her, she spotted Serena, still lying unconscious. Tonks moved over to her and turned to The Doctor again.

"Is she alright?" Tonks asked, concerned. "What happened to her?"

He explained about the Medaré and what had happened in Cardiff. Tonks looked slightly surprised.

"Medaré? I thought they were just a myth…" she said. "So that's why those three were wearing sunglasses?"

"Luna's idea, very bright girl…Serena conjured them though, now she's _brilliant_ at magic." He looked down towards the sprawled redhead.

"Sunglasses…of course that _would_ be Luna's idea." Tonks began to laugh slightly, remembering how Seamus had duplicated her own sunglasses for Luna last Monday. She sat down against the wall next to Serena and looked around.

"So this…TARDIS, it goes anywhere?" Tonks looked up eagerly, changing her hair to be layery, a bit shorter, and bright magenta.

"Anywhere, Anytime." The Doctor leaned against the wall and then sat down as well. "Why, do you want to go somewhere?"

"Anything, Anything?!" she said dramatically.

"What?"

"Oh come on, the Muggle song, you have to know it!" Tonks laughed and began to sing a part of it. "_I go crazy and you do too, that's why I'm so into you…I'll give you anything, anything, anything_…"

"You have the lyrics_completely_ wrong-"

"No, I don't…its Storm's version, she changed those lines, I've heard it. She got the Encore that week." Tonks said stubbornly.

"Was that the one where she jumped into the crowd?"

Tonks nodded and did a near-perfect imitation of the 'Storm Eyes' without having to metamorphose at all.

"It's a bit like a Time-Turner, isn't it?" She looked towards the center controls and back to him.

"Oh, it's better than that!" The Doctor said. "Your Turners just go backwards…the TARDIS can go anywhere, anytime…._anything, anything_."

"I just meant it was similar, I wish we had-"

The TARDIS shuddered, throwing everyone inside it a little, and two short wooshing TARDIS noises were given off. Tonks gave The Doctor a sort of an 'is this supposed to be doing this?' look as he leapt up.

* * *

"Well that wasn't very far…" Tonks said slightly disappointed as she opened the TARDIS door to find that they were in Hogsmeade village sometime still during nighttime. She had hoped if the TARDIS _was_ going to go somewhere else, it would be someplace interesting and different. She looked back at The Doctor as they stepped outside. "Why are we here?"

"Well don't ask me, you did it." He looked around at the village. Noticing her confused expression, he explained further. "The heart of the TARDIS is psychic, you were sitting…about directly above it. That, plus the Room of Requirement's own psychic abilities-"

"It completely magnifies it." Serena said from the doorway behind them. The two turned in surprise and a mix of joy and relief. Serena smiled, her dark green eyes gleaming in a fiery manner. The Doctor and Serena hugged, followed by Serena and Tonks.

"So…_when_…are we?" Serena asked, still quite confused about how she had gone from being in an alley in Cardiff during the daytime with several other people to what appeared to be Hogsmeade in the middle of the night with just The Doctor and Tonks.

"Do you think we could have just gone a few miles from the Room, with no time difference?" Tonks asked.

"It's possible, but not likely…" The Doctor glanced at the sky and then turned to Tonks. "Was it a full moon out when we got back?"

A howl echoed from not too far away.

"Oh my God…this is bad, this is really_ really_ bad!" Tonks looked slightly fearful. She had a fair guess at _exactly_ when they were.


	12. 1985

"Are we in Marauders Era Hogwarts?" the Doctor asked Tonks. He eyed the wolf on the hill behind the TRADIS. "…and that's…Remus Lupin?" 

Tonks nodded and drew her wand. She looked over to where a silhouetted creature was bounding quickly down the hill from the Shrieking Shack towards the village. Serena drew her wand as well, quite thankful to find it still in her pocket, just as the werewolf lunged at the TARDIS, colliding into its side.

Serena's and The Doctor's hands somehow found eachothers the second Lupin had crashed into the TARDIS. The three instinctively ran, Tonks hesitating slightly as she hoped Remus wasn't hurt, though still carrying on with the other two further into the village. They pressed against the first shop they arrived at, which was a quill shop.

"It's always something exciting, isn't it?" Serena panted, leaning against the wood-paneled wall, laughing slightly out of nerves.

"Seems like it." He smiled back at her, and pulled out the Sonic Screwdriver.

Tonks peered around the corner of the building; Remus was both fortunately and unfortunately alright, and had reached the center of Hogsmeade in wolfish pursuit. He sniffed the air and growled in their direction, turning towards them. Tonks did the first thing that came to mind.

"Expecto Patronum!" A silvery wolf nearly identical to the real one erupted from her wand. Remus was distracted for a moment by the other werewolf and his wolfy eyes followed after it for a short while.

"Alohamora!" Serena pointed her wand at the locked door at the same moment that The Doctor Sonic'd it unlocked. All rushed into the empty, dark quill shop as patronus vanished and the real werewolf Lupin ran in their direction. Again, she instinctively Collorportus'd the door shut at the same time as The Doctor once they were inside. A loud banging noise, which sounded as if Lupin had lunged at the door, echoed through Hogsmeade, followed by a howl.

"So do we just…wait it out until sunrise here?" Serena asked, unsure, hearing growling on the other side of the door.

The Doctor glanced at the shabby wooden door, and began to search for another exit.

"That door won't hold off a werewolf for very long," he said, scanning around. "If only you could apparate into Hogwarts…."

Tonks, curious as to why Remus was alone and when exactly during Marauders Era they were, reached to pick up the copy of The Daily Prophet which was lying on the counter of the quill shop. On the front page was an advertisement for Honeydukes 'newest' creation.

"Of course…the passageways!" the Doctor exclaimed, seeing the ad. Tonks looked up before having a chance to see the date. He continued, "There's one right under Honeydukes!"

Serena, extraordinarily quick on the uptake and hoping Tonks would follow, apparated herself and the Doctor into the cellar of Honeydukes sweet shop.

"Sorry…it's not the greatest landing this time…" Serena winced and laughed slightly, removing Licorice Wand from her hair. She noticed she had apparated them right against a shelf and about a foot from the floor, causing them to collide into the sweet-stocked shelve a half-second after they arrived.

"Oh, I've had worse landings in the TARDIS," The Doctor laughed, helping her up from the pile of boxes of sweets which had landed on top of them. "One time we crashed strait bouncing into a load of London apartments in alleyway…Christmas day, too."

"I really hope they didn't hear us…" Serena looked upwards at the ceiling. The owners of the shop were probably asleep two levels up.

Tonks apparated into the cellar as well, slightly better than Serena had, and clutching the copy of the Daily Prophet in her left hand.

"I really hope he's alright…" Tonks said, thinking of Remus. "What I don't know is why is he alone? Where are Sirius and James…they wouldn't have detention _this_ late at night, would they?"

"Unless we're here before they could become Animagi." The Doctor said, looking towards the paper in her hand. "Newspapers; the best thing for when you've traveled into unknown time and space…can I see that?"

Tonks nodded and handed him the paper.

"You wizards have _way_ brilliant papers…" He looked somewhat amusedly at the moving photographs and animated adverts before looking to the top of the page and them over to Tonks and Serena. "We're in 1985!"

"1985? Seriously?" Tonks laughed, putting the situation aside for a moment and thinking of the Muggle song, which she began to sing quietly. _"…U2 and Blondie and music still on MTV… Her two kids in high school, they tell her that's she's uncool, but she's still preoccupiiiied…"_

"Does she do this a lot?" The Doctor, amused, turned to Serena.

Serena shrugged.

"1985, so Remus would be…I'm rubbish at math, really…15 or something?" Tonks said. "About 5th year, I think."

The Doctor nodded.

"They became Animagi in the 5th year…which must mean we're here in the fall, about, say…mid-October?" he said. "We could possibly be exactly 22 years in the past to date."

"22…hang on, I'm 24." Tonks said, just realizing. "Does this mean that somewhere out there…holy crap."

"There's a 2 year old you somewhere in London area? Yes." The Doctor said. "But I'd_really_ recommend you keep your distance, all sorts of things can happen if you don't."

"Don't worry…" Tonks shook her head in amazement. "I have absolutely no plans to see my past-self, that would just be _way_ too weird."

"I'm not born until '89, 1st of October…I'm not going to accidentally end up doing something…right?" Serena asked, slightly concerned.

"You're not planning to, and not if we just stick around here. You should both be fine." The Doctor assured.

* * *

They kipped for the remainder of the night in Honeydukes cellar, seeing no real need to go into the passageway as they were already underground, though they made certain to awake before the owners of Honeydukes noticed three strange people from the future in their cellar.

Tonks peered out of the small window, which was level with the ground. It was just past sunrise, about 6am. She could see down the leaf-covered village street that the door to the quill shop was in bad condition. Not a single person was in the streets yet.

"We can just apparate out," Tonks turned back towards Serena and The Doctor, "It's not really that uncommon to see people apparate in this village. Is that little lane just there besides the Three Broomsticks fine by you two?"

She turned her hair about average length and black, also changing her eye color from dark brown to medium blue. She shrugged.

"I don't think it really matters but just…as a precaution." Tonks said. She turned and was gone.

* * *

"You see…I'm loads better when I can actually see where I'm going!" Serena said, having just apparated herself and The Doctor quite a lot better this time.

"That's not usually the general idea of Apparation." Tonks teased, laughing.

Serena stuck her tongue out at Tonks sarcastically.

"I passed my test just fine…the second time." Serena said, laughing as well.

Tonks quickly reparo'd the quill shop's front door from across the way. She turned to The Doctor.

"What now?" She asked.

"Oh, I dunno…what do you two want to do? Seeing as we _are_ in the 1980's, and," He looked at a poster pinned to the bulletin board outside of the Three Broomsticks. "It looks like it's a Hogsmeade weekend today, I suppose we could stick around for a little bit."

Serena beamed.

"We're in 1985!" She said, looking around, incredibly.

"I know!" The Doctor smiled back at her.

"I think I like this…time travel and adventure and all…" Serena said as they began walking.

"Well, outrunning a werewolf 22 years in the past isn't very much," He said. "Not when you compare that to the Slythene, or even that other type of werewolf."

"Slythene…that sounds like something out of Care of Magical Creatures class…" Serena said. "Besides, I'm a witch…I think I could be useful on the TARDIS and all."

"Are you applying to be a 'companion'?" He asked curiously.

"Are you accepting?" Serena looked up at him, cocking her head slightly.

He looked down towards her and grinned.

"I think I am."

* * *

"I can nearly do it, I can get about halfway…" Tonks and Serena overheard a young Sirius Black tell equally young James, Remus, and Peter about his Animagi progress.

After breakfast at the Three Broomsticks, the two of them had decided to spy on the Marauders and Snape while The Doctor moved the TARDIS to somewhere less noticeable. Wizards, unlike Muggles, were far more likely to pay attention to a large, unfamiliar blue box sitting in the middle of a pathway.

Tonks had, by now, completely changed her appearance so that her 15 year old future love would not recognize her. They still, however, kept a bit of a distance.

"Where do you think Snape is?" Serena asked, scanning the crowd for a greasy-haired Slytherin boy.

"Remus makes a pretty cute 15 year old, doesn't he? I've seen a picture, but it's a bit different seeing the real thing…" Tonks said distractedly.

Serena nudged her and pointed to the Hog's Head. She had just seen what looked quite possibly like a 5th year version of Severus Snape enter through the doorway. They followed him, taking a seat within viewing distance of the black-haired teenager who was having a glass of Firewhisky alone.

"He seems sort of…lonely…" Serena said.

"I think he's kind of cute, actually…in a different way…" Tonks glanced at the future potions teacher.

"Cute?" Serena laughed, "The same man who I hear put you in detention every other week when you were at Hogwarts?"

"Not 'every other week', you've gotten detention way more than I ever did." Tonks laughed. "And…I think the 15 year old Snape is into _you_, not me."

She looked sideways in his direction. For about the past 5 minutes, Severus had been staring quite dreamily at the unfamiliar redhead.

"I'm never going to forget this…" Serena shook her head in disbelief.

_A/N: In order for my timeline to make sense, as well as have all of the post-millennium references such as Rockstar work out, the 'present day' of this fic, seventh year Hogwarts, takes place in the 2007/2008 year._


	13. According to Divination

"It's a bit weird..." Serena whispered over the table to Tonks, casting a small glance at the teenage Snape. "It's a bit different than I expected, I sort of want to, I dunno…I wonder what he used to be like?"

"Well Sirius and Remus always said he was a bit of a git." Tonks laughed slightly.

Serena hovered halfway between sitting and standing for a moment, she looked over at him again. _I really hope this doesn't screw up time…_ she thought, while heading over to his table. The young Snape looked a bit surprised that she had taken notice of him. He smiled at her.

"Er…hello." Serena said, slightly uncomfortably. _What on earth do you say to someone who's a complete git to you 20-odd years in the future_?

"Oi, looks like_Snivelly_'s got himself a girl!" A voice rang from just through the doorway. Serena turned and saw the four marauders.

"How much d'you reckon he paid this one to sit with him?" James nudged Sirius as they approached the table which Serena and Snape were sitting at.

Serena stood up, furied.

"He didn't _pay_ me!" She shot to James, "What the bloody hell do you think I am?"

James looked slightly taken aback by her, though Sirius laughed.

"No offense meant to you." Sirius said. "You do really have awful taste, though, if Snivelly's your thing."

"Oh leave her, I suppose she's not doing anything wrong just by sitting with the git." Remus interjected.

"Right," James nodded. " But I think we _should_ spare her from this Slytherin slime…the least a good Gryffindor can do."

James flicked his wand at Snape. "Evanesco."

Severus was completely mortified to find himself pantsless, much to the laughter of the Marauders and the few others in the bar who had been watching.

"I think he'd have a much better view from the ceiling…" James began to point his wand at Snape again.

"_Don't_, he hasn't done _anything_ to you!" Serena whipped her own wand out and pointed it in James's face. Though she was a good deal shorter than him, standing only at about 5'3, she still managed to rather intimidate James. "It's no wonder he's a complete ass in the future, the way you lot treated him!"

"In the what?" Remus said.

_Oh, fuck._ Serena looked over at Tonks with an 'I-just-completely-mentioned-I'm-from the-future-didn't-I?' look on her face. Tonks nodded in a sympathetic, but honest, way.

"According to…Divination, but...that's never totally accurate." Serena attempted to save. "People in his star sign have a good chance of becoming complete gits in the future if they're pantsed in…the month of October."

Tonks managed to suppress a load of laughter at Serena's explanation, though it did appear to be slightly convincing to the Marauders and Snape. She was joined shortly at the table by the Doctor, who looked over at Serena amusedly.

"Did she just…?"

Tonks nodded.

"And now she's trying to…?"

Tonks nodded again, laughing slightly.

Serena noticed that the Doctor had joined them, and left the Marauders and Snape. She went over to the two of them and leaned against the Doctor a bit dramatically, turning to him.

"And that's why_next_ time," Serena said, "You're going to take me to a_proper_ place in the future, or far enough in the past where I can't run into anyone I know."

A series of short bangs sounded from behind her. Serena whipped around, her wand out again. For about a second, however, it went black and she felt very compressed. She found she was no longer in the bar, but somewhere behind the Shrieking Shack. Both Serena and the Doctor looked at Tonks a bit confused.

"I'm sorry…but it would have turned into a huge mess if you'd interfered." Tonks said, slightly apologetically. "Besides, I'm getting sick of being in 1985."

She had apparated them, by chance and a lucky guess, relatively close to where the TARDIS was actually parked, only a few yards off.

"That apparation's a bit of an odd feeling, isn't it? It's sort of this squeezing, and then it's like 'pop'…" The Doctor said to Serena as they walked back to the TARDIS. He noticed she looked slightly upset. "What is it?"

"I didn't screw it up _too_ badly, did I?" She looked up at him slightly guiltily. "I mean, Tonks seemed pretty serious…"

"It's not you," he glanced up ahead at Tonks. "I think it might have been a bit of a shock for her to see people she knew act like that, especially her future love."

"Remus was decent…he seemed to be the only one that wasn't convinced with my Divination lie, though." Serena said. "But I can't say I was really too surprised by all of that, I mean, with someone like Snape, there's got to be a pretty bad past somewhere."

"You don't know the_half_ of it…" He remembered a certain chapter in the seventh book.

"So where are we going now?" Serena asked hopefully as they stepped into the TARDIS. "Somewhere…exiting and futuristic?"

"Well, we could go to-" The Doctor began.

"Can we go back to Hogwarts for a minute? Present day Hogwarts…" Tonks interrupted. "I just want to see something."

The Doctor obliged to her request and set the controls for the Room of Requirement, present-day Hogwarts, sometime soon after they last left.

* * *

"That was _so_ great, I've never actually flown TARDIS-style while I'm actually awake before!" Serena said excitedly as they arrived back in the Room of Requirement. "It _definitely_ beats Portkeys and Floo Powder."

"I'm glad you like it," the Doctor said to her. "Some think it's a bit bumpy, but it's not really too bad."

"That's what makes it great, isn't it?" Serena laughed. "It's all very unexpected."


	14. Of Batboy, Fishgirl and Cows on the Moon

In the Room of Requirement, Remus Lupin and Gwen Cooper sat surprisingly quite patiently on some steps just past the door. It had been around three hours since Gwen had seen the TARDIS take off, and was about five in the morning. Just as Remus placed down the American tabloid he had been curiously asking her about since finding out about Torchwood, a bit of a breeze blew over the pair, and Gwen heard, sooner than she thought she would, the distinct mechanical whoosh of the TARDIS. They saw the three TARDIS-goers step out from the doors of the wooden blue box; Serena and the Doctor talking to eachother in a very Companion-type manner, and Tonks looking very much like someone who had just came inside after standing out in the cold. 

Remus hugged Tonks. He would have been wondering for quite a while where she had gone for over three hours to if Gwen had not have had the sense to come to his office to tell him after realizing that they might be a while.

"Where did you go to?" He asked Tonks very interestedly.

"Just Hogsmeade, 1985…nothing huge, really." Tonks said, possibly avoiding his eyes.

"1985…I was a fifth year then, did you see me?"

She nodded.

Remus smiled.

"I'm sorry." He laughed slightly, which made Tonks smile. Bearing absolutely no care at the fact that there were three other people watching them, she kissed Remus for quite a long time.

Once they broke off, Remus looked towards Serena.

"If you went to 1985, I can only just recall this now, but…we met, didn't we?" Remus said. "James was rather scared of you, I believe."

"I could tell." Serena laughed. "I sort of knew you'd remember it now, you didn't seem very convinced with that rubbish divination bit."

"I think I though you used a time-turner back then, it's not incredibly uncommon, though I didn't know how far in the future it was…time turners really can't go back more than a couple of years." Remus said. "It's strange that I only just remembered that event just now. If it happened 22 years ago, I thought I should have noticed the first time we met…or possibly I did…time travel is very confusing."

" It's a lot of timey-wimey…stuff, yeah." The Doctor said. He noticed the copy of Weekly World News, particularly a small side-bit on the cover pointing out about something strange which had happened in Mexico recently.

"Professor Sprout gets those," Serena noticed that the Doctor had picked up the odd Muggle equivalent of 'The Quibbler'. "She thinks they're funny."

"You'd be surprised how many of our lot, Wizards, end up in that thing," Remus said. "Sometimes it's accidental, some Muggle writes in claiming to have seen something, but what's more serious is some wizards think it's a good way to make money. They'll transfigure their friends into having pig snouts or bat ears, or send in pictures of magical beasts. The ministry's not too pleased with them, but provided, they can't catch most of them either."

"You were saying about our lot too…" Gwen began to say. "All of the alien stuff in there, things like cows being transported to the moon and all. It's mostly rubbish, but there might be some truth, do you think?"

"The moon, it's a great view…no cows, not that I know of." The Doctor said. "Judoon and hospitals, but I can't think of any cows."

"You've been to the bloody moon!?" Serena started to say excitedly, and then paused. "I'm not…actually that surprised by that."

Tonks peered over at the page of Weekly World News which the Doctor was looking at closely, as did everyone else.

"I bet the Ministry's not happy with whoever that is…" Tonks pointed at the silhouette shape of a witch flying over some hill in Mexico. "Muggle witnesses and all too."

"See, that's what's odd," the Doctor looked up from the page at the others. "That's not a witch-"

"What...is it a Muggle having a laugh?" Gwen suggested.

"I wish…its worse, much worse," the Doctor continued. "And I thought they all went back inside that globe…it's a Carrionite."

"A what?" Serena looked up at him curiously. She had never heard of Carrionites before.

"Carrionite; an ancient race, from the dawn of time. They use words and shapes to create, well, 'magic'." He explained. "A few of them returned, but I thought they were all gone now, Shakespeare sent them back…he finished off with 'Expelliarmous', actually."

"Oh my god…it says that some Muggle cop was _attacked_ by one of them." Serena read into the article. "That's bad, isn't it."

"Very." the Doctor then jumped to action and looked at her. "Well come on, it looks like we've got to stop them again!"

The two ran to the TARDIS. About at the door, the Doctor turned to the others.

"Anyone else want to come? We might be able to use a few more witches."

"I want to." Gwen step forward. "I might not be of a lot of use as I'm not a witch, but I want to. Hell, Jack would. What about you two?"

Gwen, halfway to the TARDIS, looked over at Remus and Tonks.

"I'd like to, but I can't." Remus shook his head. "What if we end up on a full moon? Or _on_ the moon. Besides, I have to teach here…"

"I do, I think." Tonks said confidently eagerly. "It's kind of fun and…it fits being an Auror, a bit…fighting, you know, 'dark wizards' and all, the evil Carrionites."

Tonks kissed Remus yet again before heading over to the TARDIS as well. She turned at the door and winked at him.

"See you in a minute." She said jokingly to Remus.

* * *

"You're getting a bit of an entourage, Doctor." Serena joked, raising her eyebrows at the Doctor. "So where are we going now, Mexico?"

"Nah, they'll be gone by then." The Doctor ran about the center controls, setting them to their next destination. "They're on the move. I've set the TARDIS to lock in on their next location, which, according to this, should take us right to…"


	15. Santas and Names

"…Auckland, New Zealand!" the Doctor exclaimed as the TARDIS began to take flight. "Always wanted to go there. The real one, here on Earth, not _New_ New Zealand again."

"We're still on _Earth_?" Serena said a bit loudly in a slightly disbelieving and disappointed manner. "I thought this could travel in _space_ too? It _feels_ like we're in space…"

The TARDIS lurched and she held onto a part of the center to keep from falling over. Tonks honestly _did_ fall over at that point, though Gwen, who was standing near no part of the TARDIS with anything to hold onto, managed to avoid falling by grabbing hold of the Doctor. The TARDIS steadied and they let go of eachother. The Doctor looked over to Serena.

"You know, you remind me of someone. We're in the Time-Vortex, that thing that that TARDIS whizzes through during the opening sequence with all the credits and things...and yes, other than that, Earth."

_A/N: I really don't know what that thing the TARDIS is in during the opening bit and sometimes during the show is actually called…that's just a guess on my part shrugs._

The TARDIS slowed and the distinct mechanical whooshing sound of the moving center-bit died down.

"So, when are we at now?" Serena asked, hoping for someplace a bit far in time.

"We are at…" the Doctor checked some device on the central controls. "December 15th, 2007. Sorry, I know you were hoping for someplace far and distant, but it's still…the future. A bit."

"You could have at least taken us to the New Year." Serena kidded.

They stepped out from the TARDIS doors, apparently on a rooftop of a large building.

"Bit warm for December…" Gwen said, taking off her jacket.

"_New Zealand._ It's their summertime here." Serena reminded her, looking at what she could see of the city from the rooftop they were on. "And we're definitely in Auckland… is this Queen Street?"

She looked over to the others again.

"I've been here before, a few years ago to see some Quidditch a bit south of here." Serena explained. "Muggle planes are absolute _rubbish_, don't ever bother…they're really cramped, the food's horrid, and they take an _eternity _to get anyplace But mum insisted we try it at least once…she's fascinated by the way Muggles travel."

"They're not _that_ bad, we make do with what we've got." Gwen, being the only Muggle out of those on the rooftop, spoke up. "The rest of us haven't got flying broomsticks and portkeys and all."

Serena was slightly embarrassed at this…she'd forgotten for a moment that Gwen was actually a Muggle; she seemed so Torchwood, so…in the know on things. Different from just an average Muggle going about their day. Gwen apparently noticed this as well.

"It's alright, I suppose I _am_ a bit different from just a regular Muggle with all of the Torchwood bit and all." She said to Serena. "How many Muggles can say they've been to _Hogwarts_?"

Tonks, not wanting to be _too_ noticeable if they happened to be in a crowd or trying to be discreet sometime, changed her hair from bright pink to a light blonde shade.

"You know, with your hair like that, you three look like-" the Doctor started to say to Tonks, noticing she had changed her hair color.

"No, _don't_ say it." Tonks stopped him before he could go further with that bit. She laughed at the fact that she was being compared to that yet again and decidingly changed it back to a lighter pink.

"What? I can't say that three girls, a blonde, a redhead, and a brunette, on some sort of saving-the-world adventure…" He teased her.

"No, you can't." Tonks said through a lot of laughter.

"Hey…_look_!" Serena pointed excitedly to something over the edge of to roof. "We're on the roof of Whitcoulls."

"What _is_ that?" Tonks pointed as well to the back of some large shape which Serena had pointed out.

"_That _is the reason I know we're on Whitcoulls." Serena started, "It's-"

"The Giant Santa." The Doctor said. "They have that in New New Zealand as well; it's a bit of a tradition…5 billion years, a really_ long _tradition, isn't it?"

Serena looked curiously up at the Doctor.

"What exactly _is_ 'New' New Zealand, anyways?" She asked.

"It's part of New Earth, along with New New York, New London, New New Brunswick…" he began to explain.

"There's a _New_ Earth?" Serena said a bit surprised. "Haven't heard of that before…how long's that been going on for?"

"Well, you wouldn't. That's because it's in the future; 5 billion years from now once this earth's gone, they start up a new one. Almost the exact same everything…including the names…and the giant Santa's on top of bookstores."

Serena thought she should honestly be more alarmed that in five billion years the earth is apparently gone for some reason, but she wasn't really, exactly. Five billion was a rather long time, after all…and apparently everyone just moved off to some other plant and got started right where they left off_. A bit uninventive if they did it the exact same though_, she thought, _I mean, if I were on a new planet and all, I wouldn't mind having to get used to a couple new names and landmarks_. _Still…_

"Can I see it, New Earth and all?" she asked. "I mean, after all of this here in Auckland is finished with."

"If you want to. But I thought you wanted something more exotic and alien?" the Doctor said. He realized at this that he had already taken two different people to New Earth in the last few years. This was starting to be a bit of a habit.

"I thought in 5 billion years it'd be a bit futuristic and all…maybe a few aliens?" Serena said, smiling.

"Some…and cat nurses." The Doctor smiled back at her.

"Cat nurses, what…they've been transfigured?"

"No…I don't think so, they're just…cats. Human-ish cats"

"I have to see that, I really have to see that." Serena shook her head in amazement. Yes, she was a witch, and fairly used to seeing all sorts of magical spells, creatures, and items, but this, all of this alien…futuristic, time-traveling stuff was something quite different.

The four looked down at Queen Street below them. It was fully light out, but quite early in the morning, actually, around 6am, and not a huge lot of people, except for a few eager tourists, were on the streets at all. As Tonks looked over in another direction, more to the Sky Tower area, she noticed a distinct black shape speed through the air.

"Doctor," Tonks said quietly, leaning into him, as well as drawing her wand. "When you said you were going to take us _right_ to the Carrionites…"

The black shape Tonks had seen, along with another, swooped down before them. They distinctly resembled the old storybook-type witches. Serena drew her own wand out as well at their arrival. The first Carrionite let out a witchy cackle.

"We meet again, Doctor." The Carrionite cackled and taunted. "But you haven't even got Shakespeare this time around to create words, just three ordinary women…pretty powerless, aren't you this time?"

"He's got the real damn thing!" Serena yelled before anyone else could reply. She sent a jet of red light at the Carrionite, though it was somehow deflected.

"Ah, a little witch, is it?!" The Carrionite swooped closer to Serena and the Doctor. "But she's less clever than she thinks, this…"

"You leave her alone," the Doctor yelled, knowing what the Carrionite was about to do. "Don't you dare!"

"…Serena Rose Spinks!" the Carrionite finished pointedly.

"Protego!" Serena yelled at the same moment that the Carrionite finished, having to try quite a lot more than usual to block the spell. Though she felt extraordinarily lightheaded for a moment, she was otherwise OK. The Carrionite was thrown backwards a bit, onto the floor of the rooftop.

"Rose?" the Doctor said a bit astonished, looking over at Serena. "Your middle name is Rose?"

"Yes…is that important?" Serena said curiously. "It's because of my hair, I think. It's always been about the color of a tomato, and I suppose my mum just thought 'Rose' sounded better than 'Firetruck' or something."

A few feet away, Tonks shot a few more stunners at the other Carrionite, but all were either avoided or blocked. The Carrionite bore down angrily on Tonks and Gwen, most obviously trying to concoct something as Tonks attempted 'Impendimenta', as stunning spells were being of no use.

The Carrionite laughed, as this did not take any effect either.

"You think you're special, don't you?" the Carrionite said, moving towards Tonks. "But so what, if in the distance, some duck honks? You still can't stop _this_, Nympha-"

"Silencio!" Tonks shot out rather successfully, keeping the Carrionite from completing her sentence and spell. Though the rest of 'Nymphadora Tonks' was mouthed, nothing took effect. "…And yes, I _can_ stop that."

Both Carrionites now lifted up into the air and swooped menacingly overtop of all four of them, who ducked as they did so.

"However you got out, and whatever your plan is, it ends here!" the Doctor said threateningly to the Carrionites, who hovered in the air a little bit away from the rooftop.

"Really? You dare, Doctor, and your witchy companions…but they have no power over us." The lead Carrionite, who was honestly quite familiar, said in a slightly airily manner. "After all…what good is a witch…"

She paused, bringing her hand backwards.

"…without a wand."

As if gathering and throwing, and then re-gathering the wind, she motioned with her hand. Save for Gwen, everyone with something, a wand and even the sonic screwdriver, was thrown backwards in a large gust of wind. Their tools flew forwards without them, though Gwen took advantage of the fact that she was unaffected and managed to successfully reach for the only object in her vicinity as they flew by, the screwdriver.

The other Carrionite held up a small, square, white piece of plaster, which she flourished and snapped in half before they both flew off.

In a second, the roof in which Tonks, Serena, Gwen, and the Doctor were on top of cracked in several places. Everyone instinctively held on to whoever they could as the roof of Whitcoulls collapsed inwards, taking them down with it.


	16. DIY Wand

Back at Hogwarts, sometime in early November, a few days past Halloween, Severus Snape stood in his office. A sudden recollection had been bothering him for well over a week. It had certainly been an improvement in his class, and his own sanity, he thought, yet there was still something quite strange about the claims that had been made by Professor Lupin. As well, there had been a notice of several missing potions ingredients from his own stores. For once in his life as Potions Master, he had no suspicions that Harry Potter was behind any of these strange occurrences, no, instead, this lay with someone else. Serena Spinks had been no where to be seen since roughly the 20th of October, though excuses had been made. They were all viable excuses, as were the ones explaining the rumors which lead him to believe that Tonks had not shown up at the Ministry for half a month either; however, only Snape could spot a small, yet gaping, hole through all of the claims.

It was the one memory, quite some time ago. The details were not clear, though he recollected a vaguely familiar young woman. She had, he knew, tried to defend him, though she was most definitely not Lily Evans, and this was a nearly unheard of occurrence by anyone else. She had mentioned something, something about him, and appeared to have an interest in Divination. Yet, that was the part he now found so peculiar…especially at the mention of the newest excuse, that Serena and Tonks each were 'traveling'. Traveling…

Severus raised his wand to the side of his head and extracted a silvery thread, which he placed in the 'borrowed' Pensive, which now stood on his table. He stirred the contents briefly with the tip of his wand until they revealed a clear picture of the incident in his mind. It began to play out like a movie; there was him, a younger, 15 year old image of himself, sitting at a table in the Hog's Head alone and looking over towards an 18 year old girl with a head of thick, slightly longer than shoulder-length, rose-red hair.

_It couldn't really be her…_Snape thought, peering into the image_. A time-turner would not have gone back twenty two years in the past, it couldn't, not even the most recent advances in magic could achieve that…_

The girl now had left the table in which she had been sitting at talking with a completely unfamiliar girl with medium-length, wavy, brown hair who seemed to be a few years older than her. _Completely unfamiliar…_

At the point in which the Marauders arrived in the bar, Severus thought he really should take a closer look into the scene rolling in the Pensive. Though not wanting to re-live his high school days, he felt he needed to get to the bottom of this recollection, and plunged himself head-first into the image.

* * *

"Well if I had my damned _wand _I could just reparo it." Serena said annoyedly, looking up at the large hole in the roof as she climbed off of the last of the rubble. Certainly the Muggles were going to notice that a large amount of the roof of a rather known building had just caved in…even if there was nobody else around and it was only the smaller roof over the topmost attic area of the bookstore.

Gwen handed the Doctor back his sonic screwdriver as he helped her dislodge her leg from the sinkhole of plaster, wood, and cement which she had stepped into.

"I'm a bit amazed, actually," she said, freed. "We fell an entire story with all roof stuff, but all landed unhurt and nothing fell on top of any of us. That's pretty lucky, isn't it?"

"Oh, it's not just luck…" he pointed upwards to where several pieces of roof hung frozen in midair.

"We _can_ do a bit of magic without our wands; we're still witches, and we have magical powers an everything," Tonks said, stepping off from the last bits of cement and plaster herself. "But wands concentrate it. You can't really do a proper spell without a wand, it's just uncontrolled and unpredictable."

"It's a bit of a survival instinct, I think." Serena said as well. "Before we get wands, we actually end up doing a lot or random stuff we don't mean to. It can be pretty powerful sometime, though…I mean, when I was seven I ended up turning one of my cousins into a pig for a little bit."

As Gwen and the Doctor stepped off of the roof stuff at last and over to the other two, whatever spell Serena and/or Tonks had unknowingly done broke, sending many large chunks of the attic roof colliding into the rest of the rubble, making quite a hell of a noise. The sound of investigative Muggles grew louder approaching the other side of the main door to the stairs in front of them. They really shouldn't be in here this early before the shop is opened and standing next to a caved-in roof…

"And I'd apparate us if I had my wand, too…" Serena said quietly, feeling rather powerless and unhelpful without a wand. "Do you think they _took_ them? What if they try to _use_ our wands…that doesn't seem like that'd be very good; they don't seem like the nicest witches…"

"They probably will try...and giving them any more power than they already have, like you said, wouldn't be good… " the Doctor said, spotting the elevator to their left. "Come on, we'll take the lift!"

They bounded over a small pile of rubbish to reach the lift, which the Doctor easily sonic'd open and up, and all climbed quickly over a chunk of cement inside as the Muggles finally reached the door at the top of the stairs. He again sonic screwdrivered the elevator doors to shut and the lift to descend.

"Good thing you caught this." He said to Gwen, flashing the sonic screwdriver in the air before stowing it.

"Yeah, it was…lucky I'm just an ordinary Muggle. I wish I could have caught more though, one of the wands too." Gwen said. She looked at the floor listing posted to the back of the lift. "Hang on…we're in a bookstore…Harry Potter's a book, they'd still have some of that memorabilia for sale, I think. In the one in Cardiff, they sold wands…"

"But those wouldn't work, would they? They're just Muggle props, there's nothing really magical about them…" Serena began to say. "But wands are really more of a vessel for magic anyways…other than the core, there's nothing particularly magic about the wand, it's just wood, with something in it. Mine was dragon heartstring."

"That's good…you're a right Hermione, Serena Spinks." The Doctor said to her. "Fancy giving it a try?"

"We might as well." She said.

"So where is the 'Harry Potter' section?" Tonks asked, looking towards the floor listing poster.

"In Fiction, which should be…" he looked over at the listing and up at the thing telling the floor number which the were currently on. "Right here."

The doors opened revealing the fiction floor of the large bookstore.

"They better not be those rubbish plastic kind…" Serena said as they searched the multitude of sections for the one carrying the Harry Potter items. Finally, they found it. "Oh good, they're not!"

Displayed along with some of the 'rubbish plastic kind' and several Hogwarts House banners were about twelve quality, wooden, Alivans wands. Serena looked through them and decided upon the one which most closely resembled her real wand, another Yew. It was 13 ½ inches, a bit longer than her usual 9 1/3 inch wand, but it would do.

"There's still a_bit_ of a problem," she said after unsuccessfully attempting a simple 'Lumos' with the fake wand. "There's no core. It says there's phoenix essence, but there really isn't."

"There are dragons in New Zealand," Tonks said. "But I don't think it's really likely we're going to be able to find and slay one for a bit of its heart in the next few minutes…"

"Were there any other cores in the books? Besides just the Ollivanders ones?" Serena asked the Doctor, knowing that he had read at least the seventh book.

"Fluer Delacour did, she has a Veela hair in hers, one of her grandmother's" He recalled the 'Weighing of the Wands' chapter of the fourth Harry Potter book…the book with Barty Crouch Jr.

"A hair…from anything non-human and a bit magical…that would work?" Serena looked up at him, an idea just occurring to her. He could honestly tell what her idea was, and thought it was a pretty good idea, brilliant, actually…if it worked, which they both assumed it would.

Serena, now laughing that she was actually doing this, reached up and pulled a brown hair from the top of his head. She held both the hair and wand together, and then handed them to the Doctor, who sonicly screwdrived the hair inside the wand.

"This is…different…" Serena laughed, taking back the new wand. "But I hope it works."

She pointed the 13 ½ inch, Yew,….Time Lord…wand at a book perched on the nearest window ledge.

"Accio!" the book sailed smoothly towards her. She smiled in complete happiness at being able to do proper magic again and looked up at the Doctor. "That is so…amazing."

They hugged for a brief moment, until Serena decided to pocket the small Alivans pamphlet about her wand wood, which she never actually knew the significance of before.

"Are you going to get a do-it-yourself Time Lord hair wand as well?" Gwen asked Tonks, who shook her head.

"No, I don't think it would really work for me as well as it does for Serena. Maybe the hair of something else for mine, but that kind just seems to really suit her."


	17. Sky Fire, Ice Tower

Twenty two years previously in the pensive, present-day Snape positioned himself in-between the fiery girl and the table in which she had came from. As he watched the scene from so long ago play out again, he knew. Her appearance and voice may have been excusable as perhaps an older relative of hers, but there was absolutely no mistaking, as he saw her whip her wand out at James's face, Serena's distinct 'fly-by-her-first-impulse' personality which he had, through 7 years of teaching the girl, grown to know and dislike. Then came, he viewed, that telling, somewhat composed, lie which she was so capable of through years of practice. Other voices now flared up behind him, along with a rather familiar laugh. Snape turned to the table.

The 'unfamiliar' young woman was now so obviously Tonks. Though she was physically different than her normal appearance, the way she acted and laughed, and now her voice, was recognizable to Severus. She was, he had to admit, rather good at disguise, though.

What Snape could not at all figure out, however, was who the man sitting across from Tonks, and now being playfully leaned against by Serena, was. There was something there which Serena was saying to him, something which made Severus intensely curious about that situation. He decided, if it was possible, he would follow them further into this scene.

* * *

"Oh it does, it totally does!" Serena turned to the automatic door as it shut non-automatically behind them.

"What does?" Tonks asked, not knowing what Serena was talking about.

"The door, when it shuts like that…" Serena said to her. "Doesn't it sound totally like-"

"The TARDIS? Oh my god, it does!" Tonks realized. "Oi, Doctor, did you notice that? The way those Muggle electric doors sound…almost like those TARDI noises, innit?"

"TARDI….that's new." He looked over at her. He noticed her accent had changed a bit in about the last few seconds. "And what's with you sounding like a chav all of a sudden?"

"What…I can be all chavvy if I want to, 'because I want to…' ,ya?" Tonks replied, in about two different accents at once.

"Ok, that wasn't chav, that was like, fake Swedish tourist girl…" Serena laughed

Tonks blinked and looked over at them.

"Ok, that was weird." She said, now not sounding anything like a chav trying to do an Ikea commercial. "It was like I was talking…but I didn't know I was talking…"

"Was it the wands?" Gwen asked. Both she and Serena looked over to the Doctor for an answer, though he appeared to be looking at something else though the glass of a nearby electronics store. He motioned for them to come have a look.

"It could have been a really rubbish 'Imperio' or a Confunding Charm, but it wasn't very long lasting." Tonks suggested as they gathered closer to the glass.

"They could have been practicing for something worse, couldn't they?" Serena suggested as well. "That could have been just to test if it would work."

"Have any of you seen this before? It's on all the channels." The Doctor pointed up at the screen just above him. Identical footage was playing as well on every other television in the shop.

"I have no idea…" Serena shook her head, having hardly ever seen Muggle television except perhaps a tiny bit one summer at Lilah's house. "Is that what Muggles watch on tele…fireplaces?"

"It's the Yule Log, I think…bit it's a bit different." Gwen said, looking at all of the screens.

"And it's a bit early. It's never on every channel, just a few closer to Christmas." The Doctor said again, looking closer at the flames as if trying to figure them out. "There's something different about this one…"

"I think it's called FireplaceTV…" Gwen said, her eyes locked on the dancing flames on the screen. "You can get it on the web too...24 hours a day."

Serena noticed something else a bit different from the last time she had been in Auckland around this time of year.

"I know the shops don't open until maybe 8, but shouldn't there be more people around? I mean, this is _Auckland_, the most populated city in New Zealand, and a huge tourist stop. I've only seen maybe four or five people on the streets since we got here over an hour ago."

"You're right, there should be more people around…and that thing's running 24 hours a day online and on every channel. My guess…" the Doctor looked at Gwen, who seemed entranced by the burning logs on the television, and then up at a stack of apartments behind Whitcoulls. "Is that they're all watching FireplaceTV. Which explains why no one's noticing the roof."

"But why? Is it a distraction to make them look the other way…or are they trying to hypnotize them into doing something?" Tonks asked curiously.

"That…is what we're going to find out." He turned to her. "Which direction did you see that Carrionite fly from again?"

"Around the Sky Tower area." Tonks pointed to the large tower which was visibly standing far taller than any other building in Auckland.

"Sky Tower?" Serena said in surprise. "There's a TV station _right_ next to there…TV One or Two or something."

They began to move, though Gwen stayed affixed to the program, watching the flames and apparently not taking a lot of notice of anything else going on.

"Why's it only affecting her? We were looking at it just as much as Gwen was at first." Serena asked.

"Well, she's a Muggle, ordinary non-magic human…she's affected when we aren't, and we are when she isn't." He pulled Gwen away from the store window, breaking her gaze with the fire, though she resisted.

"I want to see it, it's just so…" Gwen began, unable to quite find the right words to describe the allure of the burning logs.

"Well you can't, because it's doing something to every Muggle in this city-"

"But I have to!" She struggled against him. "It's right behind me, I can feel it."

"Turn them off, turn them all off." He looked over to Serena and Tonks while still holding Gwen away from the screens.

Serena quickly unlocked the door with her wand and shot several stunners at the televisions. It did turn them off, though they were also now quite broken. As the last one shattered and the image died, Gwen's enchantment with the fire broke.

* * *

"I feel a bit stupid about that back down there…" Gwen said quietly as they neared the top of the long lift ride up to the viewpoints of Sky Tower. Serena had decided against apparition to the place, giving the excuse that it was still quite a public place…although her other reason which she didn't admit was that she was unsure if she even _could_ apparate properly with this wand.

"Don't, it's not your fault it does that." The Doctor said to her. The lift slowed to a stop as they reached the desired floor. "Ah, there we are, Sky Tower. Tallest building in the southern hemisphere…seems like a good place for a plot."

The four stepped out of the elevator and onto the Main Observation Level, which was large and circular with continuous glass windows running all around it. Since the Sky Tower didn't officially open until 8:30, it was just them on the level.

"Oh this is brill…" Tonks leaned against the railing by the large glass window, looking out at about all of Auckland city in amazement.

"I know, I've wanted to come up here again for a while, it's just so great." Serena looked out at the miniaturized city, the harbor, and all of the surroundings that went on for numbers of miles.

Both Tonks and Gwen, having both never been up here before, walked around to the other side to take a look, and to see if they could spot anything odd as well, which was a bit of the reasoning for being up here.

"I love these." Serena said to the Doctor as she stood on top of one of the many clear glass rectangles built into the floor and looked downwards at the rooftops of the buildings far below. "It's like I'm standing on completely nothing, just in the air. It's completely thick and safe, but there's still this feeling; I love it."

"You like the risk." The Doctor said, smiling at her and standing on the glass floor as well. "Like it could break, but it doesn't."

"Do you think if it did break, we'd fall into that pool there?" Serena joked, pointing out one of the many rooftop swimming pools that appeared to be directly below them. In the impossible situation of the thick glass breaking, though, she knew she'd just apparate them someplace else. She turned back to the subject of being in the air. "I wish I was actually good at Quidditch; I love to fly, but I'm absolute rubbish at any of the positions, which is why I never end up…augh!"

Without any warning she let out a pained moan and buckled to the floor, holding her head, her face in an expression of at first pain, then a mix of fear and blank confusion.

"Doctor! Tonks, she just kind of…" Gwen yelled from the other side of the floor.

"I know, it's happening to Serena too!" He yelled back over to Gwen. "Get her off the glass."

"She's not on the glass…what's happening to them?"

"It's like they're using her own magic against her…" He looked closely at Serena, who was giving off a faintly electric feel. "…she's so confused."

"It's so much…" Serena struggled to whisper. She was overwhelmed, and so strangely disoriented.

"Come on, just look at me…you can fight it, you can." He placed his hand onto hers, looking into her dark green eyes. She was absolutely pulsing with magic, far too much than natural. Through it, she managed to push off the excess of magic slightly; the glass behind her began to crack with the strain. "That's it; just focus it all onto the glass."

The glass floor behind them shattered. Serena began to become more aware and the compressed feeling died down. Finally it stopped entirely when a second glass floor beside that one shattered as well.

"So they can break." Serena noted as he helped her up. She stumbled a bit dizzily, though into the Doctor, rather than the hole behind her. She looked up at him and smiled slightly. "Thanks."

"You alright?"

She nodded, and they went over to the opposite side of the deck where Gwen was looking curiously at Tonks, who appeared to just be, well, frozen.

"What is it?" Gwen asked, noticing his arrival, and that Serena was ok. "It looks like something different, she doesn't look like she's in pain or anything…she just sort of…stopped."

"It is something else; it looks like…almost the opposite." He felt nothing electric coming from Tonks at all, unlike he had with Serena. Her eyes had been sometime during the time in Auckland metamorphosed from their natural dark brown into a deep blue, though this was really rather unimportant to the situation. He looked at Tonks puzzledly for a moment. There was something cold about the air around her. "Fire and ice."

"What?" Serena looked at him confusedly.

"Well you, you were pretty much on fire, just surging with energy…but she's locked up, frozen."

"But you can stop it, right?" Serena asked a bit panicky. "Just do whatever it was you did with me."

"I can, but not like that, it's completely different. It has to be something shocking…" He looked at Tonks, who was distant and immobile, so deeply frozen and unresponsive to anything. He kissed her, fully and passionately, and she began to kiss him back for rather a long bit of time.

"Tonks is getting a bit of a snog on today…" Serena whispered to Gwen, watching Tonks come around more the longer her and the Doctor kissed.

"…Remus is going to be pissed." Tonks laughed as they broke off.

"Sorry." He said, but Tonks just shrugged. She hadn't minded at all.

"Oh, there was something I was going to tell you I saw, just before all of that." Tonks said, trying to remember exactly what it was. She was still trying to shake off that disconnected feeling a bit. "It was a poster or something."

"That one there?" He pointed to a 'Did You Know?' type plaque which hung a few feet behind where Gwen and Serena were standing. All turned to see what the poster had to say:

'_The mast on top of the Sky Tower houses an FM antenna that broadcasts 17 stations (a world record for just one antenna)'_

The Doctor pointed his sonic screwdriver upwards, definitely detecting what the sign told, and more.

"The largest FM combiner in the world, of course…they're using it broadcast FireplaceTV!" He turned to Serena. "Can you get us up there?"

"By 'us'…do you mean all four of us?" Serena said uncertainly. "It's harder the more people I apparate, I've never done that many before…"

"I don't have to go." Tonks said, "There must be something else I can do."

"I'd like to give it a feel, but I don't have to go either." Gwen said as well.

"There is." The Doctor said, "You two take the lift down to the basement level and shut off the power to stop the airwaves from getting out. Here, you might need this."

He threw the sonic screwdriver to Gwen, which she caught again easily. Both Gwen and Tonks headed off back to the lift on the other side of the room.

"I still don't know if I can…well you've seen how rubbish I can be at this even with my other wand…" Serena hesitated as he took her hand.

"You've done this before, just me and you, like in 1985." The Doctor said, confident in her apparation abilities.

Serena nodded. She raised her wand, turned slightly on the spot, and with a faint crack they were gone.

_A/N: Sky Tower facts courtesy of the wonderful skycityauckland webpage, which I looked into as I couldn't remember everything about the Sky Tower (Much like 'Serena', I've been there once before) and obviously don't know everything either. And also [insert disclaimer…no offense at all is meant to whoever does that FireplaceTV thing, I think it's great (but I'm a Muggle…gasp j/k). _


	18. The Minx

"That was brill." Serena whispered, looking around at their surroundings. "I swear it's that best I've ever done."

Serena had, much to her own surprise, apparated the two of them nearly perfectly inside a small, circular room, the topmost of the tower. The inside looked strangely out of place, however, as pieces were reminiscent of a witch's lair. Amongst some technical components of the airwave transmitter sat a steaming cauldron, an ancient-looking spellbook, and several voodoo dolls. Two of the prominently displayed shabby voodoo dolls were each bound to a separate wand; the doll bound to the wand recognizable as Serena's looked slightly singed, while the one bound to Tonks's wand was a bit damp and surrounded by melting frost. There was also, standing oddly out of place, a fireplace.

"Where are they?" Serena asked, stepping over to the large spellbook curiously and beginning to have a look at what was on the pages.

"I don't know…they should be around here somewhere, they can't have gone far in the last few minutes." The Doctor examined the controls of the station, taking a look at the camera pointed at the fireplace itself.

"Your guess is correct, we are never far." A cackling voice sounded as the two Carrionites appeared in the center of the room. The one speaking spotted Serena. "So the little witch survived…pity."

"Yeah, real pity for_you_…seeing as I'm about to kick your ass." Serena threateningly pointed her wand at the Carrionite.

"You wouldn't." The Carrionite pulled out another voodoo doll from her robes.

"And why not?" Serena said angrily, still holding her wand at the ready. "What's that supposed to be?"

"Oh, just a little something I still have…" The Carrionite's gaze flickered from Serena onto the Doctor, who was standing to the right of her. "From the last time."

"How did you get out?" the Doctor intensely asked the lead Carrionite, whom he realized the familiarity of at last.

"The same as ever, with help from dear Illire." The Carrionite, now known to be Lilith (though she had aged an almost unrecognizable amount since last seen), indicated the other one behind her. "She alone escaped those words so many many years ago. Oh, it took quite a long time for her to find just the right spell, but she did, and bought me back. And now we stand again, and soon…will all stand."

"Not likely." Serena wordlessly blew a small filing drawer up at Illire, who had been making a move towards the other dolls. It threw the Carrionite backwards a bit, and off her feet, though did no real damage. She then turned her wand back upon Lilith.

Lilith stepped closer to Serena, flourishing the old voodoo doll in which a familiar hair was still entwined onto.

"Oh, that brings me back to just why we are. Because, if you try to stop me…if you do anything at all…" the Carionite's eyes flickered from Serena to the Doctor as she spoke. "He gets it."

At that moment, the transmitting machinery hummed to a stall and the lights dimmed considerably. Tonks and Gwen, both Serena and the Doctor knew, had succeeded in shutting off the power to this station. The Carrionites looked around surprisedly, checking out their equipment for a moment in slight panic.

"Just do it; whatever they've got in mind, I can take it." The Doctor took this opportune moment to say to Serena. "Just fire off whatever you can to stop them."

Serena looked rather apprehensive, but still fired off a series of spells and jinxes at the two Carrionites while they were occupied with the power shortage. They all made contact, she knew they did, but were somehow blocked again.

Lilith whirled around, muttering something, and sent a jet of fire from the cauldron at Serena, who quickly threw it off with a shielding spell coupled with a flame-freezing charm. She shot back a blue beam of light, a Flippendo jinx, towards the Carrionite. Lilith, seizing her own moment to carry forth her threat, held the voodoo doll out in her hand to absorb the entirety of Serena's spell.

"A hope times ten, to see we do not meet again." The Carrionite chanted over the straw doll. The Doctor, rather than Lilith, was hit with ten times the amount of power of Serena's simple knockback jinx, which evidently was a rather lot. Serena turned to see him be both knocked backwards with a considerable amount of force and shocked with about twelve times the amount of electricity put into a normal Flippendo.

"This little witch will _never_ hold power over us." Lilith cackled to Illire.

"You want to see about that?!" Serena spun back to face them, her wand pulled back and prepared to strike.

"Words…"the Doctor winced and said towards Serena. "You have to use verbal spells."

Lilith, immensely dissatisfied with the fact that he was talking to Serena, produced a pin from her robes as well.

"Expelliarmous!!" Serena yelled, bringing her wand forwards in a quick motion and pointing it at Lilith. Just before the Carrionite could stab the voodoo doll, the straw doll flew out from her hands and sailed back somewhere in Serena's direction.

"If you want powerful words and shapes, then come," Serena began to chant, figuring out something on the spot which rhymed well enough with the spell she had in mind, which she hoped would finally finish off the two Carrionites. "I say to you…Expecto Patronum!"

A silvery mink erupted from Serena's wand and charged towards the Carrionites. It was working; they seemed to shrink in fear of the approaching animal, becoming more wispy and unsolid as the mink bore down on them.

The Doctor, getting up, withdrew a smallish glass globe from some unknown pocket and threw it over to Serena, who seemed to know what to do. Amidst the Carrionite's screams as they began to become rather misty, she prompted her Patronus to drive the two back into the globe; the glass ball becoming a good deal heavier as they were forced back inside. The mink hung around for a moment and then faded into the air once it was no longer needed.

"A mink?" the Doctor said curiously as Serena handed him back the Carrionite-filled globe.

"Yeah, it is." Serena nodded, now collecting both her and Tonks's original wands. "I don't know what it really stands for, it's not obvious like Tonks's one, but I like it; it's my little minx."

"A bit…Pickler-ish?"

"No…I think hers would be a 'caalamaariii'." Serena put on a rather bad attempt at a North Carolina accent as she said the last word.

"Maybe a 'Sal-mon'." the Doctor replied amusedly, similarly trying out Pickler-ese on the fish name. "Explain how a British pure-blood witch knows about American Idol?"

"Explain how a British-accented Time Lord also knows about American Idol?" Serena countered, folding her arms and cocking her head expressionatly.

Serena walked back over to the Doctor, holding both of her own wands and pocketing Tonks's. She held one in each hand for a moment, making a ninja-like pose out of it for a second. Two wands…

"I hope the Flippendo wasn't too bad…it's not supposed to ever be that powerful." She said a bit apologetically.

"Nah, came off worse the first time with that doll." The Doctor smartly removed his hair from the voodoo doll, then turned back to Serena. "You were brilliant."

"Oh…well, I guess I was." Serena smiled, feeling very complemented.

After a few seconds, she looked around the small room. Serena noticed there weren't any lifts up here, and then shrugged. Without hardly any notice, she grabbed ahold of the Doctor and, the Allivans wand in her other hand, apparated them both to the floor level of the Sky Tower.

* * *

"Oh my God, you did it, didn't you? You beat them?!" Gwen said as her and Tonks rushed enthusiastically and relievedly at Serena and the Doctor, who had just apparated across the room from where they stood near the lift on the base level. 

"So did you!" Serena said happily, hugging them both.

"Tonks was brilliant," Gwen said, and then looked over at the Doctor. "She figured out how to use your screwdriver in like, a _second_, I swear."

Tonks nodded at this, and threw the sonic screwdriver back to the Doctor.

"I metamorphosed a bit as well, I made myself look a load like this woman I saw coming from the area so I wouldn't attract a load of attention for being somewhere we shouldn't be."

Serena noticed something in the gift shop behind them.

"Do you have any Muggle money?" she asked Gwen quickly. "I swear I'll trade you some Galleons for it once we get back to pay you back."

Gwen nodded and the two of them went off in the direction of the gift shop.

"Just a bit, I just have to see something." Serena called back to the Doctor and Tonks and continued on her pursuit of the thing she had spotted.

"Oh, she's _so _going to be one of the ones that just runs off like that." Tonks said to the Doctor, laughing.

"You know," he said to Tonks. "You're welcome to come with me too…for as much as you'd like to."

"Oh I know, and I plan to." Tonks nodded. "Maybe not _every_ trip, but just, 'as I'd like to' "

Serena and Gwen returned just then, Gwen carrying a small brown bag in which held a souvenir she had decided to buy for herself, and Serena quickly placing her thing, a 'lucky' New Zealand-style round bone spiral on a black string, around her own neck.

"I had to." Serena looked over at the Doctor and Tonks and said explanatorily.

* * *

At the ground of Whitcoulls yet again, it looked as if the Muggles were finally out and about, and noticing that a part of the roof had caved in. A passing Muggle man said something about a rumor of a telephone box on the roof to the woman he was with, who looked up in the direction of the rooftop herself.

"Are we going to apparate up there?" Gwen asked Serena hopefully, wanting to experience it for herself.

Serena looked over to the Doctor questioningly.

"Are we done here?" she asked him.

"I think we are." he glanced around at the construction crews that were starting to arrive by the building.

"Alright then, then you are going to get to apparate." Serena turned back to Gwen and held onto her arm with her non-wand hand. In the half-second between the sidewalk in front of the building and the roof of Whitcoulls again, things went black and there was the distinct compressing feeling of apparation. She had landed them both rather well on a peice of the half-roof near the TARDIS which hadn't collapsed inwards. A few seconds later, Tonks apparated herself and the Doctor onto a spot of roof nearby, to the other side of the TARDIS.

About a minute later, much to the puzzlement of both onlooking Muggle New Zealanders and tourists alike, the TARDIS faded from veiw.

* * *


	19. Festive

"It's a bit…festive." Serena said, looking around the Room of Requirement. Definitely not how you'd think it would look in mid-late October. 

"I think we were_definitely_ gone for longer than 'a minute' " Tonks looked at the décor as well.

Hung from the ceiling of the Room of Requirement were hundreds of red, gold, and green Christmas baubles. As well, silvery white garland which looked very much like ice was draped around the Room randomly. It was quite beautiful, actually.

"Does it just do this around Christmastime, or did someone make it look like this?" Gwen asked Serena and Tonks, who obviously knew more about the Room of Requirement than she did.

"Someone did, I think." Tonks answered, wondering who it was. If it was near Christmas now…she realized something; it must have been about two months since Remus had last seen her. She went quickly across the Room, opening the door into the seventh floor hallway.

About two feet away from the doorway, underneath a bushel of hanging mistletoe, a brown haired man was locked in a long snog with a young woman with long, curly blonde hair.

"Jack!" Gwen hit the man. The couple broke apart, revealing to be one Captain Jack Harkness and one Lilah Moon.

"What? It's Christmas." Jack motioned to the mistletoe above them, shrugging it off. At this, Gwen rolled her eyes and smiled at him in an annoyed-but-amused sort of way.

"Christmas _day_?" Tonks looked at Jack and then to the Doctor behind her. "You never miss a chance to land on Christmas day when you can, do you?"

Before he could answer, Remus noticed Tonks from down the hall, and called to her, happy and relieved that she had returned. Instantly, they ran towards each other, meeting up in a throwing, romantic hug and lengthy, passionate kiss.

"Why did it take you so long to get back?" he asked her, concerned.

"Oh, that…it only took a few hours, actually to be there and 'save the world' and all." She told him, her arms still around his neck and his still around her waist. "It was Auckland, New Zealand, about December 15th. Ten days ago, actually, I guess."

"Then you haven't seen the latest Weekly World News headline…'alien ship suspected to be responsible for roof collapse' " Remus recalled descriptions of Muggle eyewitnesses claiming to see a mysterious vessel vanish next to a caved-in bookstore rooftop. He looked at Tonks. "Was that true?"

"A bit. It did collapse, and…we were on it. But it wasn't _our _fault it happened." Tonks nodded, and then turned to another subject which was on her mind. "What's with the Room, did you do that?"

"Oh, that…" He recalled the reasoning for the decorations. "It was meant for you, actually. We were supposed to be in there, and…"

Remus took something from his pocket.

"I love you, and I've missed you. I know I've said before that I was too poor and too dangerous, but you saw through that and didn't care. Dora Tonks…" Remus dropped down to one knee and held out a silver diamond-cut diamond ring. "Will you marry me?"

"Yes! Of course I will." Tonks, overjoyed, kissed him again.

* * *

"I completely just realized," Serena said to Lilah a few minutes later as they all descended down the staircase to the Great Hall for the feast. "It's Christmas and I haven't sent my parents anything, do they even know, does everybody know?"

"Well, thankfully _I_know that once it was an entire year for somebody else," Lilah said to her, recalling what she knew. "So I took care of it. I sent them a couple things I thought they'd like and forged a card from you…but it's just Christmas day, you can still send your own if you'd like."

"What about everybody else…I mean, not that I care at all, but I have missed about forty classes by now. People must've noticed."

"Excuses…" Lilah nodded. "We're good at coming up with those."

"When you say 'We'..?" Serena asked curiously.

"Me, Lupin, and Luna. And Jack a bit."

"Right." Serena nodded. "Speaking of Lupin, how's the Werewolf Rights Club coming along?"

"Really good." Lilah said excitedly. "We've got a few things planned for next month. Oh, and don't take this the wrong way at all, but seeing as I didn't know how long until you'd be back, I sort of had someone fill your position for the past few months; my cousin, actually."

"You have a wizarding cousin?" Serena said surprised, as Lilah was Muggle Born.

"I know, it's a surprise, I had no idea. Did you know…she's a werewolf too, she told me. But don't tell anyone else, she's trying to keep it secret and all of course." Lilah lowered her voice on the last bit. "She's done now though, her internship finished just before break…she wants to teach Ancient Runes or something. But the spot's open for you again now."

* * *

Inside the Great Hall, the Christmas feast had already begun. The typical twelve large Christmas trees stood throughout the Hall, decked out in stunning fairy lights. Magical snow fell from the enchanted ceiling, and various icy garlands were strung between all of the gargoyles and windows. The four long house tables were filled with those students who had stayed at Hogwarts for the holidays, all enjoying helpings of the many platters of delicious, festive food. Loud bangs could be heard here and there as people pulled apart Wizarding Christmas Crackers. Up high on the staff table, Dumbledore had swapped his usual hat for a tall candy cane striped one he had received from a cracker and was chatting merrily with McGonagall.

"This," Serena said, smiling, to the Doctor and Gwen. "Is Christmas at Hogwarts."

"It looks just like the books…" the Doctor noted, impressed.

The seven of them, Serena, Lilah, Gwen, Jack, Remus, Tonks, and the Doctor, took seats at the end of the Gryffindor table. Apparently they were not the only ones picking this table. Nearby, next to Lilah, Luna and Seamus were seated as well, Seamus having his arm around Luna and her leaning into him a bit.

"Luna!" Serena leaned forwards to see around Lilah and called over to Luna happily.

"Oh, hello. You're back, it took you long enough." Luna smiled. "How was it, where did you go?"

"Only to ten days ago, actually, but down in New Zealand…" Serena continued on, explaining the rest as well to her.

"What happened with the Medaré?" the Doctor asked Jack across the table and Lilah and Luna to the other side of Serena once she had finished.

"They're back in Cardiff, living in a flat near the bay." Jack began to say.

"But we figured that out back in the end of November," Lilah interrupted. "The right potion and all…mind you Snape's been wondering what's happening with the ingredient stores. We actually got to go _to_ Cardiff again, Luna and I when we dropped them back off…_and_ inside of Torchwood again."

Lilah smiled happily at this.

Serena gave an unexpected gasp, feeling a large, cold hand digging into her shoulder.

"Back for the Holidays, miss Spinks?" And icy voice bore down to Serena from behind her. She turned to find Severus Snape standing behind her, a look of both curiosity and resentment on his face. "I believe there is something which we must discuss. A word…_now_."

Snape impatiently prompted Serena to get up. All eight of the others at the end of the table looked between Serena and Snape protectively, however, Serena reluctantly stood up anyways.

"I'll be fine." She mouthed to the others before turning and following Snape out of the hall.

He led her past a caroling suit of armor and into a darkened empty classroom on the ground floor, not far from the Hall.

"Explain yourself." Snape said to her, closing the door.

"What do you mean?"

"_Don't_ play innocent." Snape said, rather annoyed. "Explain to me how exactly you vanish for two months and turn up in _nineteen eighty five_."

"I wasn't in 1985 for _two months_," Serena rolled her eyes. "I'm not telling you _how_ I got there, and if you do recall, I stood up for you…a thing I'm _really_ starting to regret doing, now that you mention it."

"I didn't need any pity from a cocky, impulsive, show-off like yourself. Now, if you_weren't_ in 1985, what have you been doing for the past two months while you missed over _forty_ of my classes? What idiotic reasoning would possibly give you the excuse-"

"Oh, I don't know, nothing _big_." Serena said sarcastically. "Just, you know, saving the _world_ and all."

"If you aren't going to _tell the truth_…" Snape drew out his wand.

"What? You don't think I could?" She raised her eyebrows challengingly at him. "Or is it that you don't think that there's anything else _possibly_ out there besides the wizarding world and Death Eaters that might want to-"

"Legillimens!" Snape pointed his wand at Serena, hoping direly to both shut her up and divulge her secret.

Under the spell, a stream of images and scenes flashed so vividly that she became unaware of being in the dark classroom at all, seeing only the memories. She saw first herself leaving the Multi-House Common Room moments after breaking up with Ryan, which turned quickly to another image of Lilah and Luna revealing bits of facts from various episodes to Serena as they were trying to get the TARDIS to work. Serena was dimly aware of Snape being behind this and tried desperately to force him out of her memories as the image shifted yet again to the scene in the sidewalk lift of Torchwood, and then over to the Doctor telling her she was random and her replying 'a bit' after she had apparated them and Luna to the other side of the fence. _These are privet, damn it! Ok, not 'privet' exactly, but still nothing Snape should know about_, Serena thought, trying hard to recall what someone's supposed to do under Legillimency. An image of running from a werewolf swam into focus now. _Oh, screw it_, Serena thought again, she had no idea how to do Occlumency.

Focusing on what she did know very well, however, she managed to draw out her own wand.

"Flippendo!"

Snape was blasted backwards, the surprise causing him to loose focus in his spell, quitting it entirely. Even regularly, Serena would definitely admit to having a more powerful than average Knockback Jinx.

"The fuck was that?" Serena panted, half-yelling and outraged at what he had done. Though drained of nearly everything she had from the effort of trying to throw it off, she left the room in a fired hurry.

At the base of the Grand Staircase, very near to the doorway of the Great Hall, she paused. Oh God was she in absolutely no mood to head back to everyone right away. She leaned against the banister post for a moment, thinking both that she _should_ get further from the classroom, but in a complete pause of where to go. Settling half-heartedly, she sunk down and took a seat on the steps.

_That was just not…legal, he can't do that_. Serena thought, still furied._Snape hadn't seen a huge lot, really, but still…_

She looked over in the direction of the doorway, interrupting her train of thought. Surprisingly to her, the Doctor was standing just past the doors and walked over to Serena as they noticed each other. Seeing her sitting on the staircase like that, he was reminded a bit of Hermione in that Yule Ball scene of the fourth movie.

"Are you alright?" He asked her, seeing as she was very tellingly upset over something.

"Oh, just brilliant." Serena said sarcastically, and a bit ruder than she meant to. "I was just basically attacked by Snape with his fucking Legillimency, but no, otherwise, I'm perfectly ok."

"Well you had to go with 'I'll be fine'," He sat down beside her. "That's just asking for something to happen."

"That was a bit cliché." Serena laughed, leaning against him. He put his arm around her comfortingly. "So why Christmas Day, anyways? Did it just 'happen', or…?"

"It was the nearest time after the 15th that the Room of Requirement was open; it has to be in use somehow for the TARDIS to land in there." He explained.

"Speaking of the TARDIS and all…" Serena looked at the Doctor pointedly. "Can we go?"

"What, right now?"

Serena nodded, her fiery red hair bouncing as she did so.

* * *

"I feel like I should leave a note or something…'keep the damned room open'." Serena held one of her wands in midair, pensively. Decidingly, she did just so, conjuring up a short bit of parchment with some chosen words upon it. She opened the door out of the Room of Requirement a crack and sent the letter zooming memo-style down to Lilah.

It was roughly ten minutes since they had left the base of the Grand Staircase, Serena just returning into the Room about a minute ago, having decided to shove a few bits of clothing from her trunk back in the Gryffindor Seventh Year dorm into a small bag, just incase she felt she'd need anything other than the dark red hoodie-style jacket, black starry tank top, jeans, and purple converse which she had been wearing during all of the other TARDIS trips.


	20. A Little Competition

"Do you think he's a vampire?" Lilah asked Luna, sitting in the library with her on Boxing Day. "I should start a rumor about that…"

"It's been done…" Luna shook her head. "Half the first years were convinced of it a few years back. It was quite amusing. We could…charm things to fly at him?"

Lilah opened a small book she had just found in a remote shelf of the library in the Muggle Studies section, it would be just the perfect thing for this situation.

"Here it is…over 500 unwritten Hogwarts rules. There's bound to be some inspiration in here!" Lilah turned to the first page happily. Luna read on as well.

The day before, just after dinner, they had received a short letter, zooming Ministry of Magic interdepartmental memo-style, from Serena. Written on it was the obvious instruction to keep the Room of Requirement functioning for a short bit of time every few days, as well as a brief explanation as to what had happened with Snape, and that they were heading off for a trip or two. And then that was it, neither of them had seen her at all since the previous day.

"These are great." Lilah laughed, reading the first 25 or so. "I wonder who came up with these?"

"I feel like doing some of these just for the hell of it." Luna smiled. "Between getting revenge on Snape and all."

"I say…we each close our eyes, flip through, and pick 3 rules each," Lilah said to Luna, very amused. "And we _have_ to break the ones we pick."

"Alright then." Luna agreed to the deal. She decidingly took the book, shut her eyes, flipped through and pointed out three separate rules to break…

_16. I will not reenact Harry Potter Puppet Pals in the Great Hall_

_29. I do not weight the same as a duck_

_405. I will not call Pizza Hut and ask them to deliver to the common room._

Lilah did the same, randomly pointing to her own set of rules…

_180. I will never again use the spell used to enchant bludgers on peas.  
388. I will not sing the "Beverly Hillbillies" theme song when the Weasley family passes by._

(and to her utter amazement)

_212. I will not transfigure a pepperpot into a Dalek._

Seamus Finnegan came over to the table just as Lilah had pointed to her final rule.

"What's she doing?" He asked Luna curiously, looking at the book as well. Luna explained the deal quickly. "Can I be in on it too?"

"Can he?" she asked Lilah.

"Go ahead…just look away and pick three to break." Lilah nodded and handed the thin book over to him.

Seamus grinned. He had felt there was a rather lack of mayhem lately, especially what with the Weasley Twins having left nearly two years ago and Serena Spinks having been away from Hogwarts and not able to stir up her usual random bits of mischief here. He looked at his rules, those being…

_15. I will not tye-dye all of the owls._

_141. Screaming "VOLDEMORT!" in crowded hallways is not in good taste._

_347. I will not speak to Professor Snape with a Transylvanian accent._

"Should we up it at bit…turn it into a bit of a competition?" Luna asked slyly. "The first one to break all of them gets…um…"

"A free TARDIS trip once Serena gets back?" Lilah suggested. This was, of course, considering a hell of a lot of things, such as if the Doctor would even _want_ to become part of a 'reality show' prize, but it seemed like a good thing to compete for._ Nine rules, three houses…and only one can be…the sole Companion._ Lilah laughed to herself as she thought of that.

"Oh, that sounds good." Luna smiled eagerly. "So It'll be sort of like we're competing to temporarily take the place of someone who does all of these things anyways."

"How about giving the comp another up? Four rules…see who can beat all of those the fastest." Seamus egged on.

"Alright then, you're on." Lilah agreed, pointing to a fourth rule for herself at random. "Hey, Seamus…how do you keep a Gryffindor in suspense?"

With that she walked off, seeking to find either a Weasley, a bunch of peas, or a pepperpot.

"What was that about?" Seamus turned to Luna, puzzled.

"She just broke one of her rules." Luna said in an airy, explanatory manner after pointing to her own fourth rule. She'd have to go down to lunch for this one, she thought.

* * *

Ten minutes later, Luna decidingly took a seat at the Ravenclaw table near a group of four First Years. Much to her disappointment, fried chicken was not on the lunch menu for today, instead being some leftover Christmas stuff. Nevertheless, she turned to the group of small Firsties anyways.

"You know, it's a good thing they aren't serving chicken today." She said to them. "Because you know what happens to the old owls in the Owlery, right?"

They looked at her strangely, though some were beginning to grasp what Luna might be getting at and looked appalled.

"That's right," Luna nodded at their expressions. "The fried chicken is really Kentucky Fried Owl."

As she was getting up to figure out what to do for the duck rule, a few sliced carrots struck the side of her face, then bounced off, wheeling over to the girl seated to her right.

* * *

Over at the Hufflepuff table, Lilah was gleeful to see a few bowls of carrots & peas._Not a single damned pepperpot, though_, she noted. _It would have been nice to get two done in one shot_.

Lilah glanced over at the Ravenclaw table…Luna was obviously in the middle of breaking one of the many unwritten rules that involved telling a First Year something odd. Not to be outdone, Lilah pointed her wand at the nearest large bowl of vegetables on the Hufflepuff table and muttered an enchantment.

She ducked just in time as every single pea, carrot, and brussel sprout inside of the bowl rose in the air and bombarded anyone else nearby, bouncing off them and spreading quickly around the entire Great Hall like so many tiny bludgers. People ducked to avoid the flying food, some laughing and some in panic. Feeling very accomplished, Lilah watched vegetables take aim of their own accord at both Luna and Seamus over at their respective tables.

* * *

Seamus waited in the hallway nearby the Great Hall. By the looks of it, Lilah had already broken 2/4 of her rules, and he had no idea how many Luna had managed to do by now. As students began to pour out of the Great Hall and down his way just after lunch, it was now or never. He waited a few moments until the hallway became verifiably 'crowded'.

"VOLDEMORT!" Seamus screamed, trying to sound afraid or surprised.

Heads turned and bodies wheeled around in panic, some even began to make a run for it.

"What? Where, where is he?" A sixth year Gryffendor boy looked around frantically.

"He's _here_?" A third year Hufflepuff girl said, her eyes wide.

A random stunner flew overtop of everybody's heads, aimed at the unknown location of 'Voldemort' within the hallway. Instead, it collided into the wall; just missing a portrait that's occupants dived into another frame to avoid the oncoming spell.

Luna ran past Seamus slightly panicked, though, not because she thought he'd seen You-Know-Who, but because she knew he'd successfully broken one of the rules on his list.

At the side of the not-quite-frozen lake, Luna paused at last. She may have perhaps maybe seen that bit of the Holy Grail a very long time ago, but she barely remembered exactly what had happened. She'd just wing it, she supposed. Taking out her wand from her robes, Luna quickly transfigured a nearby rock into a duck and scooped it up in her arms, walking in the direction of the nearest group of people fearlessly….

* * *

_Two down, two to go._Luna smiled happily, making her way back up to the castle after breaking the 'I do not weigh the same as a duck' rule._ Now where would there be a phone?..._

* * *

Reluctantly, Seamus arrived at the bottom of the stairs leading to the dungeons. They were even more dreary than usual this time of year, and not too many non-Slytherins set foot in them during the holidays. Rounding a corner, he came across the office of Professor Snape. Seamus knocked on the door apprehensively.

"Might I ask what you are doing here, Finnegan?" Snape said in a usual cold snarl.

"Er…I was wondering if…" Seamus began to say, thinking up the right words.

"Do you have any idea where Spinks has gotten off to again?" Snape inquired, interrupting him.

"No, but, you seem really pissed at her…" Seamus said, seizing his opportunity. "…You must 'vant to suuuck her bloood'."

"Excuse me?" Snape's gaze narrowed at him.

Seamus, seeing no other reason to stick around now that he'd broken the rule, bolted from the scene.

Arriving out of the dungeons and a considerable distance from Snape, Seamus thought of his fourth rule. He'd need to go to Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes to get what he needed for this one.

* * *

"Fancy meeting _you_ here." Lilah said as she arrived at the outside of the Room of Requirement at the same time as Luna.

"Oh, well, seeing as how a lot of Muggle items don't exist here, I need to get what I need for one of my rules from the Room." Luna explained. "You?"

"Well, I've just realized that both Ron and Ginny went home for the Hollidays, and my next one involves the Weasleys. I've got to Floo it over to Fred and George's shop now instead." Lilah explained as well. She concentrated on getting a pile of Floo Powder at the same time that Luna thought of her need for a universally working cell phone.


	21. Into Reality

"So, what do you think…past? Future? Another planet?" the Doctor asked Serena inside of the TARDIS, still in the Room of Requirement, back on Christmas Day.

"_Anywhere_. Just something completely random, un-ordinary…" Serena said eagerly. "I don't care where really, just…surprise me."

"Alright then, in that case…" He began to fire up the console, having a few spots in mind.

The TARDIS gave one enormous, and unexpected, lurch.

"Right…I think I've changed my mind on the whole 'great and unexpected' bit about being thrown about in this thing." Serena said jokingly, getting up from where she had been thrown to the ground from the sudden lurching movement.

"Well that wasn't supposed to happen." The Doctor said, more to the TARDIS than to Serena, as he looked closely at the controls.

"What wasn't?" Serena moved over to where the Doctor was, curiously.

"Here wasn't." He looked over at her. "We've landed somewhere, but the TARDIS just moved of its own accord again…the whole 'psychic box inside a psychic room' thing, it makes it completely unstable. Still, might as well go see where we are."

* * *

"…So…where are we?" Serena looked around at the new, and rather warm, surroundings curiously after they stepped out from the doorway. 

"No idea." The Doctor looked around enthusiastically. "But there's your 'exotic' "

He pointed to a tall palm tree. They appeared to have landed in the middle of someplace tropical, in a slightly forested area. They began to walk, trying to see if there was anything else to this place. It was fairly nice, wherever it was.

Not far later, a sudden thought occurred to Serena. She heard something…voices perhaps, which sounded distant or whispered.

"The TARDIS does crossovers, doesn't it?" She said slightly fearfully. "Do you think we could be in 'Lost'?"

"I don't think so…the island they film it on looks _way_ different than this place." He looked around to be sure. Serena was quite relieved to hear this, knowing that violent 'Others' and weird smoke monsters weren't going to be in their immediate future. "But a crossover's not a bad idea…we could be in something else."

Just out of the short bit of forested area, they came into a clearing. There was a well-decorated basket of some sort built into a spot between two trees. A large letter was wedged into the basket, leaving the lid of it open.

"Is that a mailbox…does someone live here?" Serena looked at the tiki-style basket.

"It's Tree Mail…which means," the Doctor put the note-wielding basket along with the tropical location together. "We're on Survivor. Or, here while they do Survivor."

"Survivor?" Serena looked at him confusedly. It had to be some type of Muggle show, but she honestly had no idea what it was. Her surprising knowledge of American Idol 5 and Lost was due highly to a few things on Lilah's TiVo at her Muggle household.

"It's a TV show, a reality show." He explained, having a look at the note. "People live and compete out here for a million dollar prize, usually it's on a tropical island, but it was in the tundra in 2024."

"Oh." Serena nodded. She had a slight understanding of how reality shows worked. "I wish the wizarding world had things like this…I mean, we don't have any reality shows at all, it's completely a Muggle thing. Can you tell what season of Survivor we're in?"

She looked at the letter as well. It seemed to be a clue to something, possibly about going through an obstacle course and getting something to eat as a reward.

"Not any one that took place on Earth, that's for sure." He looked over to her. "It's not written in any kind of Earth language."

"But I can read it…it looks like just normal English." Serena looked at the Reward Challenge Tree Mail note again.

"The TARDIS translates it." The Doctor told her. "You see and hear English even if it's not."

"Oh, well that's…convenient." Serena said, rather impressed. "I don't actually think there's even a spell we have that does that. There_ should_ be, really. It'd make it a load easier at some of the international Quidditch matches."

A few voices began to draw closer to where they were standing, obviously those of the Survivors.

"…and I told him that Zoey was trying to make the same deal with everyone else in our Alliance…" A first voice, a female one, said to the other one she was walking with.

As the pair of Survivors came out into view of Serena, she took another take, quite surprised. They were sort of human, but just not quite. Rather than skin, they seemed to be covered in shining scales of some sort, much like a lizard, which appeared to be changing colors as they walked, fluctuating between blue, green, and sandy brown. Upon spotting Serena and the Doctor, the pair of lizardy people looked to eachother, rather surprised themselves.

"Maybe they're part of the Reward Competition?" The female said to the other one, a male as they faced them.

"Is this another one of those seasons where there's a secret tribe that no one knows about until halfway through?" the male asked.

"Yup, you got it. We're from the secret third tribe from the other side." the Doctor said, convincingly.

"Oh…so are you the two who got voted to come over to ours then?" the female asked as well. "That happened two seasons ago too, didn't it, back in that one that ran in 5005?"

Seeming like a good plan to go with, they agreed to this one as well, and began to follow the two back to where the camp was set up.

"3000 years in the future, and a different planet…" Serena said quietly to the Doctor was they walked, being reminded of something. "Not that I was thinking of that at all earlier back in the TARDIS…but back the _first_ time, when we found it in the Room and were trying to get it to work, I think those were the exact things I said, about seeing what it was like 3000 years from now on a different planet."

* * *

Back at where camp had been made, close by to the beach, the actual Survivor contestants, near to about nine or ten of them, gathered over by the two who had returned with the clue, hearing it for themselves. 

"Have they been…Transfigured?" Serena, noticing that a few of the lizard people possessed tails as well, asked the Doctor curiously.

"It's always 'Transfiguration' with you, isn't it?" He said to her as they watched the contestants from the side.

"Well sorry, but that's what I'm used to! If someone shows up with a gecko tail or looking like half a cat, the general idea is that they got in the way of some spell."

They were interrupted by a voice sounding from someplace above, as if from a speaker system. All of the Survivors looked up in its direction as well.

"Will the current holder of the Immunity Idol please pick four members of the tribe to compete in the reward challenge." The booming male speakerbox voice announced. "This challenge will have the theme of 'Fear Factor'."

A tall scaly man, wearing a large tiki-style necklace, stepped into the center of the group as the message ended.

"Alright, I'll be fair with this." He spoke. "I'm picking…Patrice and Bob, because you both haven't done one in a while, James, and…you, the twist girl. What did you say your name was?"

The Immunity-holder pointed to Serena.

"Serena." She said, a bit surprised at being picked to do the challenge. If it was anything like the sort of things she had heard about people doing on reality shows, she was kind of exited, actually.

"Those picked please proceed to the Challenge area." The speakerbox voice boomed out again.

On the pretence on stowing her wand off someplace else for the Challenge (because she thought it would be too noticeable if she still had it sticking out of her jeans pocket), Serena hugged the Doctor, slyly placing it in one of his pockets instead for the timebeing.

"Good luck." He whispered to her, though a bit wary of the situation because of a certain Game Station a few years back. Serena could sense this.

"I'll be fine." She said, and then winced, laughing slightly. "I did _not_ just say that again…but really, I might even win. What is 'Fear Factor' anyways?"

"Oh, you'll find out. It's another Reality Show, it didn't last near as long as Survivor did, 5 seasons compared to about 516." He said, trying to explain it. "You don't happen to be afraid of bugs, do you?"

"No, not really." She said, shrugging. "Bloody hell though, Survivor lasted for 516 seasons?"

"And _that's_ just the one from Earth."

The announcing voice repeated its orders, this time a bit more demandingly. Although annoyed that it was being so demanding of her, Serena went over to join the other three competitors, heading into another pathway through the forest.

* * *

Nearing the clearing in which the Challenge was to take place, around a fifteen minute walk from camp, Serena looked again at her fellow competitors. She had found Patrice to be rather nice, approximately twenty-something in age, and around the same height as herself with a head of short, a bit Tonks-ey, brown hair. From any observation, Patrice was die-hardedly determined to win something. James was of a quiet and wiry sort, and if it weren't for the scales, Serena would have thought him to be Irish. He was kind of friendly, though sly at the same time. Bob, on the other hand, seemed just plain unpleasant, and Serena was honestly surprised that he had managed to last this far in the game without being voted off. 

"Seriously?!" Serena whispered quietly as they hit the clearing in which the Challenge was set up. 'Bugs' didn't even begin to cover it…

Set up straight in front of them were four bathtub-sized tanks, each filled with an assortment of rats and roaches. Following that, there lay covered plates of who knows what, and finally, four large structures of what honestly looked like scaffolding wrapped and draped in many live electric wires.

According to another speakerbox voice, they were to find five keys from within the rats and roaches, only one of which would actually unlock the plate of some mysterious substance in which they would then eat. If they hadn't yet quit or thrown up at this point, the contestants now had to make their way through the square electric fence and unclip three flags before finishing at last. Whoever did it the fastest, well, won.

_Alright, the first thing's not _too_ bad_, Serena thought, taking her place in awaitment for the signal to start.

Patrice, in the lane beside Serena, looked just pissed at the fact that this was the challenge she was finally picked to do. She could do it, of course, but she knew there was a near to none shot of her actually wining. _I would have done great in the American Idol Challenge last week if I'd have been bloody picked at all_, she thought, annoyed. _And now I'm finally chosen and I've got to go through a damned electric fence and eat God knows what!_

The 'start' signal was given off.

Serena rushed to the tank, getting inside of it with hardly any apprehension. Within about a second, she had found a key, then another, pushing her hand through the rats and roaches quickly. She was doing well, at her fourth key and slightly ahead of everybody else. After taking far longer than she thought she should to locate it, her hand found the fifth key and pulled it out from underneath a mass of rats. At this, she climbed out of the tank as quickly as she had first gotten into it, now trailing just behind James, several cockroaches clinging disgustingly to her clothes and hair.

At the mysterious palate of 'food', she attempted the first key, with no luck. Fortunately for her, James was still trying with his keys as well. Ahead, after failing with her second key, Serena spotted Patrice climbing out from a tank, all five keys in hand.

_Come on!_ Serena tried the third key, at last successful. She undid the lock and threw off the covering. She half wished she hadn't now…laying on the plate in front of her was a pig snout, five wriggling grubs, and a cup of thick brown mush which gave off a putrid smell.

James, to Serena's other side, was already beginning to down the pig snout, and Patrice, Serena could see, had found the correct key. Bob was now reaching this stage of the Challenge as well now, coming over to his own covered plate with his keys. Wincing horribly, this time with quite a bit more apprehension, Serena threw down three of the grubs, trying not to think of what she was eating. With a feeling as if she wanted very dearly to throw up, she finished off the last two and began on the snout, finding this to be easier to eat than bugs, but still disgusting in it's own way. She really, really wished she could use magic at this point, catching a whiff of whatever the murky brown substance was as she finished off the pig snout. James, making audible retching noises as he did so, was in the process of downing the glass of stuff with great difficulty. Deciding she'd do it as quickly as possible to have to taste it less, Serena began gulping the putrid substance. She had a feeling that there were many, many bugs inside of this, the though of which, coupled with the taste, made it harder than she had imagined to go down.

Why_ do Muggles do this? _Serena thought, thinking any Muggle who willingly went onto Fear Factor must be nuts. She finished at last, now in the lead again and in very close competition with Patrice, who trailed only just slightly behind her as they ran to the third section.

Serena found herself now faced with a large, squarish structure, draped and wrapped in all directions with live electric fence wires. Figuring out any possible way to touch the least amount of painful, shocking wires as possible, she began making her way through the maze of scaffolding and wires, jumping and wincing with every wire she did end up brushing against. The first flag was clipped to her left, just in-between two wires which were obviously placed so that she would have to touch both of them to get it. Trying to contort through them, she unclipped it; however felt it hit her as she ended up touching them once she drew her hand back. Staying as still as possible, Serena spotted the second flag well over her head, and obvious that she'd have to climb up the scaffolding for it. Halfway up a particularly agonizing climb, as the scaffolding 'ladder' was fairly laden with electric wires itself, Serena was finally able to reach for the second flag.

Just after unclipping it, Serena heard a pained yell coming from the structure on her right. She looked over to see Patrice letting go of her own high up flag and falling off of the scaffolding ladder onto several wires below, unconscious.

Not giving half a care for the competition at the moment at all, Serena leapt off of the ladder, hitting several painful wires on the landing, but not caring too much about that either. She fought out of the tangle of wires, coming out the side of her own structure and rushed into Patrice's. Alright _now_ Serena wished she had kept her wand with her; she also wished that wizards could have ever come up with a better place to keep their wands on them than sticking noticeably out of a pocket.

Reaching Patrice, Serena was relieved to see that Patrice was still alive…though most likely in a lot of pain. Serena tried to move her off of the wires, ending up touching them for herself for a moment. There was just way more power surging through these than any on the other scaffolding structure; the shocks were far more painful and long lasting in here.

"Forget bug eating,_ this_ is just one _really stupid_ idea for an obstacle." Serena muttered as she tried to move the unconscious Patrice out from the structure, feeling enormous jolts of electricity as she did so.

Outside of the structure at last, Patrice began to stir.

"Are you okay?" Serena asked her, feeling herself as if she might just collapse after all of those wires. She didn't, however.

"I think so…I hope so, anyways. Is the challenge over, who won?" Patrice began to rather shakily get up.

"James did, it was just announced about a minute ago. He got to go off and have food somewhere; he ended up picking Bob to go along with him for some reason." Serena said, holding on to Patrice as she looked very pale and unsteady.

"_That_ idiot? But Bob did rubbish in the Challenge…" Patrice said, surprised. "Hardly anybody can even stand being around him. James is totally just doing this because he wants to flip, which is shit, really."

"Flip?" Serena asked as they began to head back to the camp.

"Flip, you know, change Alliances. Haven't you watched this show at all?"

"No, I haven't." Serena admitted. "I just sort of...showed up at the right place and got thrown into it."


	22. So Something

"Can we stop, just for a second?" Patrice, feeling rather very dizzy again, grabbed ahold of a palm tree for support halfway into the walk back to camp. 

Serena was honestly glad to be pausing as well, and held onto the opposite side if the palm herself.

"Haven't they got medical or camera crews, out here?" Serena asked, realizing that she was the only one who seemed to notice or care if Patrice was alright. "I mean, why didn't anyone notice?"

"In the Survivor Dome?" Patrice said, a bit scoffingly and disbelieving. "Medical's on call, not in the island dome at all…they hardly ever pay attention to anything unless they're dialed up. And we haven't ever needed actual people to be holding the cameras. As for why no one noticed…well, it's still a competition, I'm surprised you did…well, not really, not with you…but with anyone else I would've been."

After a few moments, they began to move again.

"It's well rubbish of them not to care, completely un-Gryffindor …like a couple of self-important Slytherins putting winning a competition ahead of someone else." Serena said, quite pissed at James and Bob and with a definite mind to have a go at the both of them the next time she saw them.

"You're a Harry Potter fan?" Patrice asked, noting she'd mentioned two of the houses.

"Yeah, I guess so…could say I know a lot about the Wizarding World and all." Serena nodded.

* * *

Arriving back at the camp area, Serena and Patrice were quickly surrounded by everybody else, bombarded with questions about the challenge and reward.

"Go on, who won it?!" A very bubbly girl with light reddish-blonde hair, the pre-mentioned 'Zoey', inquired excitedly, practically bouncing on the spot.

Serena answered, a distinct tone of annoyance in her voice as she did so, though not towards Zoey. After a few more minutes, the crowd broke off, going back to whatever it was they were doing before.

"There was something_ else_ about the challenge…" Serena said to the Doctor, trying to be very quiet about it. She had meant to be talking to him in private, away from the others, however, Patrice and Zoey still stood somewhere near them.

"Do you want to go get water?" He asked her, coming up with some excuse to go off, away from the rest of the camp, because Serena was talking very quietly and kept glancing over at Zoey as if to check if she was overhearing them.

"They do that, getting water and all?" Serena said, before realizing how stupid it must have sounded to anyone else besides the Doctor and possibly Patrice, who knew she hadn't seen the show at all before. She quickly agreed anyways to the excuse, and the two of them went off in some direction, separating themselves from the camp.

"Getting water and getting firewood…two commonly used excuses for when people want to go off in private on Survivor." The Doctor said to her, once they had gotten onto some path in the woods. "You were saying, about the challenge…?"

"Other than 'not afraid of' bugs doesn't mean the same thing as 'enjoys eating'…" Serena rolled her eyes, wanting very much to throw up every time she thought about the grubs and the glass of brown 'buggy' mush. "I really think that a part of the Challenge was rigged. Because Patrice, I didn't want to say this back at camp, but she passed out in the electric maze part…and when I was in her's trying to get her out of there, it was _so_ bad, way more electricity was coming out of those wires, it's no wonder it damn near electrocuted her…nearly did me, too."

"Why her? Is she important in the game, a power-player, does she get immunity a lot…?" He asked.

"I dunno…as much as I can tell she's in an underdog alliance, she does well in Challenges, I think she's likable…"

"Oh, that's it…she's a viewer's choice!" the Doctor exclaimed. "Patrice is probably popular with the fans watching at home, which would make her a bit of a threat, then."

"But what've the viewers got to do with anything?" Serena asked. "I thought you said they vote each other out and all?"

"They do, but this isn't really normal Survivor how they're playing it here…the 'Big Brother' speakerbox voice, challenges with stuff from Fear Factor…" He explained. "It wouldn't be a big surprise if the viewers had a say in the final results…like American Idol or something."

Realizing he still had her wand, the Doctor handed it back to Serena, who took it. As their hands met, a visible bolt of electricity passed from Serena to the Doctor, shocking him.

"Oh, sorry…I thought that would probably happen." Serena apologized. "I sort of store up the electricity a bit if I'm hit with as much as I was during the challenge for some reason…I really need to Flippendo something..."

Serena scanned around, then quickly shot a very powerful jinx at a large rock, which began to crack in many places and then shatter, much like the glass of the Sky Tower floors had.

* * *

Near to two hours later, it was dark, and both had returned to camp quite a while ago…without 'water', although Serena could have conjured it up if she wished to. She was honestly amazed, though, as she sat on the edge of the bamboo shelter, at the time it was taking these people to start a fire. She had taken out her wand and was just about to use a quick 'Incendio' spell to speed up the process, when the Doctor stopped her.

"What? They weren't going to _see_…" Serena's eyes met his. She wasn't used to not being able to shoot off the first spell to come to mind. "How long's it _take_ Muggles to light a fire, anyways?"

She glanced over at the fire pit. Three Survivors were currently prodding sparks about, but still at a loss for any flame large enough to be warm. One man, in the idea of blowing air onto the fire to get it going, blew the sparks right out.

"These lot _are_ taking a really long time to do this." The Doctor looked over at the smoking, though completely flame-less, fire pit which the Survivors had been working on for the past twenty five minutes. "Oh, come on…it's not _that_ hard to light a fire…they've even got stuff to light it with."

Serena was quite ready to magically conjure up a fire, although, if she did, the flames sort of shot from her wand onto the thing she wanted to light, the fire didn't just appear. She shifted her position so that she was rather comfortably doing her usual leaning against the Doctor thing as she sat.

"Can you 'Sonic' fire?" She asked him, freezing…although slightly less now, because he was warm.

"If they ever get any kind of flame going..." the Doctor nodded, looking at the dismal fire. He then eyed Serena. "Or, if _someone_ gets a small flame started."

"Riigghht…not a big one, nothing 'noticeable' as magic, I get it." Serena smiled eagerly. She aimed her wand at an inconspicuous spot in the fire pile and wordlessly performed the incantation. After the flame had landed, she looked towards the Doctor, raising her eyebrows challengingly. "Your move now."

He discreetly pointed the Sonic Screwdriver at the fire, increasing the size of it by a bit, enough to catch on. There was something odd about the fire, though…

"Shiitt…" Serena laughed, wincing at the same time. "I think I got the color wrong…"

"The color? It's fire…orange. Is that optional at Hogwarts?" the Doctor amusedly laughed at her and the blazing purple fire before them.

"It coulda been that alien wood from…wherever we are." Serena claimed wildly, trying to play off as if it wasn't her doing. "Or, or…what about your blue Sonic stuff, getting mixed in with my _orange_ fire?"

"My Sonic Screwdriver did _not _turn the fire bright Movie Tonks Purple." The Doctor countered, sort of gesturing at the fire, though grinning.

"Is Tonks a color now?" Serena laughed. "Are there going to be, like, swatches in the Home Depot, 'Movie Tonks Purple'…"

Serena, though hesitant because she did like the flames, even if it _was_ a mistake, changed them to a regular orangey-yellow fire color. She was still quite cold, though, having left her jacket in the TARDIS.

"Purple flames _are_ warmer, though…but Bluebell flames are the best." Serena laid down in the shelter, hovering a few small Bluebell flames in midair next to her with her wand. They weren't really doing much, though, as she wasn't really that great at them.

"So what _is_ a 'Green Flame Torch', anyways?" The Doctor asked Serena, the apparent expert on all things fiery in the Wizarding World, as he laid back as well, on the other side of her tiny, curling, flames.

At this, Serena sort of made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh.

"I have completely _no_ idea." Serena shook her head. "Something someone thought the 6th book was going to be called, I guess…that and the, um…Pillar of Storge."

"The Pillar of Storge's real." The Doctor said. "Well, maybe not in the Wizarding World, but I have seen it…"

Serena extinguished the fairly useless blue flames, but looked interested at this Pillar of Storge stuff.

"You're so…something." She said, not quite feeling as if she had really landed on the right word to describe what she meant at all.

"You are too." He replied, looking back at her. Well, she was.

"Mm, yeah…but I'm also freezing." Serena pushed herself up from the bamboo shelter floor. "I really am going to go get a jacket."

Taking her wand with her, Serena quickly hopped off of the shelter and in the direction of the TARDIS. She didn't actually have a key, but, being a witch, she rarely thought of keys and things if something was locked, so this thought skipped her mind entirely.

* * *

It wasn't really that long of a trek to get back to the TARDIS, just a few minutes walk to the Tree Mail area and then left through some thick bushes for a few more minutes. A thin beam of light from her wand kept Serena from walking straight into the side of the TARDIS once she had reached it, as it was really very dark out. She tried the door, with no luck as, as she hadn't bothered to realize earlier, it was of course locked.

Nomatter for her, Serena just pointed her wand at the right spot, using 'Alohamora'. In a few moments, the door of the TARDIS dutifully unlocked, though it was a good deal harder to do than a normal lock would have been.

Serena stepped inside of the glowing, gold TARDIS, spotting her bag and jacket on the floor near a wall, and wondering just how big the TARDIS actually was, as she could see a few staircases and hallways leading off to some other areas. Yes, she'd spent so long in it once that she actually _slept_ in the console room when they first found it, but it had never actually occurred to Serena before now that there might be even more parts to it than just where she was now. Getting a different jacket from her small black rucksack, this time a shorter gold one of a different style instead of the red one she had been wearing on previous trips, she decided she'd probably take a look around the place later and exited the TARDIS, beginning to walk back to camp.

In the sodding pitch-darkness, before Serena lit her wand, she screamed in surprise. An unknown person (or thing? Serena couldn't quite tell, really) had bombarded her from the side, knocking her wand out of her hand and her to the ground. She struggled to both find her wand and throw the person ontop of her off, managing only to end up with the person and herself entangled in a load of bushes.

"What the hell are you doing?" Serena yelled as she tried to unsuccessfully elbow the person in the face.

A second dark figure jumped out at her as well, this one now holding her from the other side and forcefully pulling them all upright. She could hear a few more of them nearby, as well as a distinct sound of cracking wood that she wished she hadn't. _Were they men?_ Serena wondered, thinking they must be, by the feel of them. They were holding her just close enough…

"Bitch…" The first one groaned, Serena just having shoved her knee into…well…_there_. He let go of her for a second. She made a run for it, breaking free of the second one's grip.

"Stop her!" the second one bellowed at the other people in the area. Serena couldn't see where anybody or anything was…she seriously wished that the Doctor was with her right now.

Two beams of light shot out from either side of her. Serena ducked, but not in time, and found herself caught in-between them, unable to move.

"I'm not anybody, what do you want with me?" She yelled at them. _Why the bloody hell were a group of strange people attacking her for? _

"Fire the third at this." A voice to the side of her ordered somebody else.

"What third? What the hell are you doing this for…just leave me alone, I wasn't doing anything to you!" Serena shouted, more to be heard by someone at camp than that she actually thought they'd answer her.

A third beam of light hit her from the front. She felt hugely, increasingly lightheaded, quickly feeling as if she was being pulled someplace.

* * *

Over at the shelter, the Doctor _had_ heard Serena's yells…actually, he heard the first scream of hers, as did Patrice, who had joined him on the shelter moments after Serena had ran off, trying to rope him into her dying alliance.

At Serena's shriek…_oh, of course something had happened when she, even knowing that there was something odd going on in the Dome, had ran off on her own through the woods because she was cold_…_but Serena did have a wand, and she was really capable even without one…_the Doctor leapt up, running in the direction he knew she had gone. Patrice followed him instantly, wanting to help if there was something wrong.

Not far into the woods, they heard more of Serena yelling…and some male voices. They couldn't see anything, though, since they weren't close enough and the bush was thick.

When the Doctor and Patrice arrived at the right spot, there was nothing there…no strange people, and no Serena.

"Honestly, what's going on here?" Patrice asked, worried, and looking everywhere.

"I wish I knew…" the Doctor was scanning around the area as well. "There's something going on in this game, someone wants to sabotage it for you, and probably Serena as well now that they've seen her."

Not after long at all, he found, on the ground and broken, a wooden rod, slightly longer than nine inches. He picked it up, the ends clinging together through a shining red dragon heartstring about the color of Serena's hair.

Lying amongst the bushes, Patrice spotted something as well.

"I think this is hers…" She held up a single earring of a small red and green rose dangling from a tiny black chain.

"Serena Rose…" the Doctor nodded, smiling a bit._ This was a great find of Patrice, Serena would most likely still been wearing the other one, wherever she was. _


	23. Yo Ho!

Coming around, sometime not long later, Serena found herself being prodded at by somebody. She opened her eyes, and something which looked like a pirate and a ship fell into focus. It felt as if they were at sea as well, by the rocking movement beneath her.

"Erm, right," the pirate said, noticing she was awake and looking at her confusedly. "So… who are you and what're you doing on my ship?"

"Serena Spinks." She said. For some odd reason, that was all she could come up with, she couldn't actually even think of what her own middle name was, though she did have a feeling that, whatever it was, it was interesting and someone who she knows knew somebody else who had it as a first name…but she had no idea as to who that someone she knows was at all. "And I don't know why I'm on your ship…or who you are, other than I'm guessing a pirate."

She could think of things, details such as what a pirate and a ship were, but was drawing a large blank at anything regarding her own life…which was alarming to her, as she assumed that she should know…though she couldn't recall if she ever did either.

"I'm Captain Jack Sparrow." the pirate said, possibly slightly insulted that she didn't know who he was. "Marooned for the fourth time but rightful captain of the Black Pearl, savvy? Who was joined five minutes ago by an unconscious, confused, and strangely dressed girl."

"What…I just appeared here?" Serena said, well, confusedly. "And why am I 'strangely dressed'?"

Jack looked her up and down, she seemed to not have a clue at all. There he was, minding his own business sailing off to get the Black Pearl back from his crew yet again on some stolen Tortuga ship, when he turned and saw that this Serena girl had appeared out of nowhere and was lying on top of a few crates.

"Shouldn't you be telling me? Where're you from?" He asked.

"I don't know…" Serena strained, trying to remember. "I mean, not here, I'm pretty sure of that. I think I _was_ someplace else, before I was here…but that wasn't even home, either. I don't know where I'm from at all actually, now that I think about it."

Jack just looked at her strangely. This was weird, a random lass with about no memory of anything.

Serena got up from the crates, slightly dizzy, and unable to recall any details about her life except for most of her name, but otherwise ok.

"So, do you know the name of this ship?" She asked, for no huge reason other than to ask something, following Jack as he went back to the wheel of it.

"Of course I do, it's the…um…er…" Jack looked around. He had either forgotten it, or overlooked getting the name of the ship when he stole it. "…something Spanish?"

"Ooh, the famous pirate ship of 'Something Spanish'." Serena laughed slightly, now leaning over the side to get a look at what it was really called. She turned to Jack once she had read it. "I think it's really called the 'Mal Lobo'."

Serena, regardless if she could remember anything or not, didn't know Spanish at all, and wondered what that name meant in English.

_A/N: This author doesn't really either…beyond a few words she remembers from Spanish Class in High School. Lucky we Muggles have something called Alta Vista Babel Fish. _

She was curious about the name, however, she found the fact that a pirate didn't know the name of his own ship to be more curious.

"It's not your ship, is it?" Serena said as he spun the wheel around. She looked around, seeing nothing but blue waves on either side. She thought it was really nice, actually.

"So…Captain Jack Sparrow," Serena said again, with a certain dramatic and fiery manner, "Is that what we're doing, getting your real ship back?"

"We?" He turned to her, possibly a bit surprised.

"Yeah, I want to." Serena shrugged. "It's not like I'm doing anything else at the moment, well, I think I was before I got here, but I'm not right now, so let's go find the Black Pearl."

"Alright, 'we' will go get back my ship." Jack spun the wheel for a final time, checking his compass. The arrow spun quickly in the direction of Serena, surprising Jack for a moment, but went back to it's previous direction after a few seconds. He pulled out a bottle from someplace, taking a large drink of it, then passing it to Serena. "Rum?"

"Definitely." Serena took a rather long drink from the bottle herself.

* * *

About four hours later, they were supposedly closer to the Black Pearl, although Serena couldn't tell any difference in the sea surrounding them. She was worried that she still couldn't really remember anything but vague feelings about things, but was liking the pirate and his temporary ship anyways. She assumed that his real one would be much better than this one even, and was quite anticipating getting to see it. 

"How much further is it, anyways?" Serena asked Jack Sparrow, sort of peering like a mink to try to see anything in the distance.

"Not long." Jack said, and then looked at her. "Can you see it when you ferret up and down like that?"

"I'm not being ferrety." Serena shook her head, and then looked up again as if she was trying to see over someone. She smiled, realizing she'd done it again. "Maybe like a _minx_, but-"

Serena paused mid-sentence…_a minx…hadn't she just said something about a minx not too long ago? _She always called them 'minx', rather than 'mink' after she'd seen that bit on American Idol. Serena tried desperately to remember more about it, but she couldn't.

"Are you alright?" Jack asked her, curiously, seeing as Serena had sort of frozen and had her face buried in her hands.

"Yeah, I suppose." She nodded dully. "Just keep comparing me to animals and maybe I'll come up with something."

Serena sat down on a ledge on the deck. As there were only two people on this ship, Jack sort of had to steer it at the moment, so he didn't join her, although he would have liked to. As she sat, she felt something in her pocket, and took it out, wondering what it was, and how long ago she'd forgotten that she even put it in her pocket in the first place.

Curiously, Serena unfolded the thing, which turned out to be a piece of paper, some sort of 'Certificate of Authenticity', it read, baring the name 'Alivans'. The paper also appeared to be describing a wand.

_Why would I need a wand…?_ Serena wondered for a moment, _It's not…am I…I'm a witch, aren't I?_ She smiled in near euphoria as something clicked and she found herself able to recall most of Hogwarts and her home around London area as if she had never forgotten it in the first place. She read further into the description:

'_Yew is unique in that it is associated with both death and rebirth. It is known to enhance magical and psychic abilities and is especially suited to spells of transfiguration. The user of this wand must be extremely careful of its innate destructive workings.'_

Serena found this hugely interesting. She'd had a yew wand for ages, but never really knew the significance of it. This was all really, really…it really meshed well with something…_psychic abilities_…_transfiguration and immortality…_

"The Doctor." Serena gasped aloud. As if some lock was unlocked, she was finally,_finally_ able to remember just who that 'vague someone' she had thought about a couple of times was. And, at last, nearly everything else as well.

Quickly getting up, and shoving the paper back into her pocket, Serena ran over in the direction of Captain Jack Sparrow.

"Jack!" She called out ecstatically, and began to speak very quickly. "I know what happened, where I'm from, all of that. I don't know _why_ I'm on your ship, but I do know that before I was with-"

Jack Sparrow blinked, staring at Serena…or rather, where she had been, for yet another very odd thing occurred right before him; just as quick as Serena had arrived, she vanished, mid-sentence.

He shook his head, tilting it, and wondering if it had been the rum.

* * *

"…the Doctor…" Serena trailed off, realizing that she was no longer on that ship with Jack Sparrow, nor anywhere she recognized…although she did think it looked a bit like New Zealand. 

She was standing in a forest now…completely different from both the tropical one back in the Survivor area and the type of forest which made up the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts.

"Jack…?" Serena looked around wildly, wondering where the hell she was now.

_Thwack._ A large arrow zoomed by her and hit into a tree just to her left, sticking in deeply. She eyed it, quite surprised. Not far in the distance, Serena could hear what sounded like a battle going on.

"Oh,_ shit_." She said aloud.


	24. MiddleZealand and some 'Seeing All'

Serena did what nearly anybody who had found themselves alone and in the midst of some foreign battle in a place she didn't quite know would do; she took her first impulse and went quickly in the other direction. She would have _liked_ to help somebody back there, she thought, but also didn't honestly know what was going on either, or which side was which and what they were fighting over. 

Reaching a considerable distance away from the battle, and still amidst some woods, Serena thought of going back and seeing what was going on, however, coming from the opposite direction of her, Serena spotted somebody else in the forest as well. It was a man, wearing a leather jacket, who was completely unfamiliar to Serena, although Lilah and Luna would have known immediately who he was. He was, of course, the Ninth Doctor.

To Serena, she thought that he looked nearly as out of place in this whole battle-in-some-mystical-forest thing as she did, and was a bit curious. He noticed her as well, thinking she looked really rather lost, to be honest.

Serena gave a friendly sort of half-wave, walking over to him out of curiosity at who he was.

"Hi…" She said, looking at him with a load of questions in her mind and deciding which one to ask first.

"Hello." He replied. He had a bit of a Northern English accent, she supposed, different from the Kiwi that she had been half-expecting given where it looked like they might be. He continued, noticing that, not only did Serena look a bit lost, but she looked like she was from a completely different time period than where they were at the moment. "What're you doing out here in Middle Earth?"

"I don't know, I was just…here." Serena shrugged, looking around. "So, what is 'Middle Earth'…Who're you, anyways?"

"I'm the Doctor-" the Ninth Doctor began to say.

"The…what? No…no, you can't be the Doctor." Serena said, shaking her head in surprised at this answer. "How can you be the Doctor, have you, like, regenerated or something?"

"Well I am the Doctor!" He protested.

"Wait…" Something occurred to Serena. "If you're the Doctor, then how come you don't seem to know who I am?"

"How should I know who you are? I've never met you before." He said, looking at her oddly.

"Really, you haven't…?" Serena paused, realizing something else. The man in front of her must've been a previous incarnation of the Doctor. "…So, why are you in Middle Earth, then?"

"I didn't plan it; I was going for 2005, middle of London, Earth…not _Middle Earth_." He answered. "Going to go deal with the Nestene Consciousness."

"Oh." Serena said, recalling something that Lilah had told her, possibly about London, the Doctor, and 2005. "Would that have anything to do with living mannequins, or something?"

"It could." He looked at her oddly again. He was about to leave to get on with where he meant to be going, when he looked over at Serena again. "D'you need a lift somewhere?"

"I do…but I can't." Serena shook her head. She kind of wanted to, as she didn't know when her next route back to where she had been was going to be, or where the Tenth Doctor even was, but she just _couldn't _go off with this Doctor, not when she knew that he was quite possibly about to meet Rose.

"Are you sure?" He asked, turning back to her.

"Yes, really, I can't right now." She nodded.

"Suit yourself, then." He shrugged, and started to turn away, giving her a bit of a wave goodbye.

"See you, Doctor." Serena said, possibly too optimistically for the situation, smiling and waving as well. She then turned and went off back the way she had come, hearing the faint familiar noise of the TARDIS de-materializing as she got a little further through the woods.

In a few minutes, she was back to where she had been before. She had forgotten, in her astonishment/confusion of meeting a previous Doctor, to ask what was even going on with the whole battle…or what Middle Earth even was. Whatever had been going on, though, appeared to be over in the short time that she had left. She looked up again at the arrow which stuck into a tree to her left right above her head. It was very nice, and had sort of a fantasy-esq quality with it, but it definitely wasn't modern.

"How the hell did I travel in time _twice_ without a TARDIS?" Serena wondered aloud, stepping unlookingly backwards a few steps and looking very much as if she were directing this question to the arrow.

"You didn't." A very, _very_ familiar voice said from behind her. "Well, technically, you did, but _you_ didn't."

Serena spun around; she had never been so happy to hear an explanation she barely understood in her life, she didn't think. Standing there in the direction in which Serena had backed up into stood, of course, the Tenth Doctor.

They both instantly hugged eachother.

"How the hell d'you find where I was?" Serena asked, smiling hugely.

"Well I was going to do something complicated involving tracking the other one of this with the TARDIS," He said, handing her back the earring. "But then I just remembered that you were here in Middle Earth…something about the author changing directions again…anyways, you said twice?"

"Yeah, for about four hours I was with Jack Sparrow somewhere in pirate-land." She nodded, then her voice fell as she realized something. "I didn't even get to give him a proper goodbye, actually…I liked him, I wonder if he ever did get off the Mal Lobo and back to his normal ship…?"

"The what?" The Doctor looked at Serena slightly surprised at the mention of the name of the ship.

"The ship he stole," Serena said. "I think it's Spanish, but I don't really know what for…again, no translator spells."

She shrugged, second languages, especially non-magical ones, were more of a personal pursuit at Hogwarts, and she'd never bothered to actually learn any.

"Hang on, when I was there, I totally couldn't remember, like, what the TARDIS even was," Serena said, now curious about something that she didn't think of before. "But if it's another language, shouldn't the TARDIS have translated it anyways?"

"The transmat beam, or whatever it was, must've broken the link." He said in a way as if he were waving off the question to get to something else. "So that ship's called the Bad Wolf."

"I suppose it is, yeah, is that imp…oh." Serena paused, noticing that the Doctor had sort of about the same expression about this as he did back in the roof of Whitcoulls. "Is it to do with Rose again?"

"Did Lilah-?" the Doctor began to ask her.

"No, she was a bit selective on that front, didn't really say a lot about the other Companions…I figured it out for myself, actually, about you and Rose." Serena said. "What happened with her anyways, why isn't she still traveling with you?"

"She's…gone. Trapped in a parallel universe." The Doctor admitted sadly.

"Oh, is that all? Well it's not as if she's dead, you talk like you're never going to see her again or something." Serena said, in a slightly relieved manner.

"Well I'm probably not." He said again.

"Do you have any idea how many parallel worlds were _shattered_ in-between book five and six by writers trying to bring back Sirius Black? And he's dead, even." Serena said, rather optimistically and matter-of-factly. "You'll see her again, I really think you will."

* * *

A few moments later, and they were back in the TARDIS, heading back to the Survivor Dome several thousands of years and a few hundred galaxies away from Middle Earth.

"I keep forgetting to ask, what _is_ Middle Earth, anyways?" Serena asked from someplace around the console. "It looks a lot like New Zealand."

"It _is_ New Zealand," the Doctor answered, setting and spinning a few things on the controals. "But thousands of years ago it was called Middle Earth."

* * *

The TARDIS arrived at just past dawn in the Competition Area of the Survivor Dome, where everything was fairly much how Serena had last seen it, including the horrid squarish scaffolding structures, which were still draped and wrapped heavily in the electric fence wires.

"Are they still on?" Serena looked tentatively at the wires of Patrice's structure, which the TARDIS door had opened out to. Her hand rested on her wand in her pocket, now the Allivans one, which she had retrieved from her bag once back in the TARDIS, but she didn't draw it out yet.

"No, it's off." The Doctor said, scanning it. He turned to Serena again. "You know there's no power source at all for the wires, they were working, but it doesn't look like they've ever been connected to anything."

"Should they be?" Serena asked, generally being used to not noticing electricity and the like. "I mean, in Hogwarts nothing's ever connected to…um, is it plugs?...everything just runs off magic."

Although maybe not the smartest move, Serena and the Doctor began to climb through the mess of wires and beams into the structure.

"Why the hell are we doing this?" Serena paused and looked over at him. "Maybe I've been reading too much badficquotes, but I don't think randomly stepping into a previously plot!point structure for no apparent reason is really that smart of a thing to be doing…"

"It moves the plot along…?" the Doctor said obviously. "And it's not for 'no reason', there's a reason."

"So what _is_ the reason?" Serena asked, possibly half-annoyed sounding, but not actually really that annoyed by it.

"We're looking for the power source, that's the reason." He told her.

"I thought you said there _wasn't_ a power source?" Serena asked, going further into to structure, both ducking under a low beam and stepping over a high one. "And it don't know why that really has anybody bothered, it's not that unusual…"

"Well in Hogwarts maybe, but everywhere else…" the Doctor began to say, before pausing. Serena was possibly right. He looked at the wires again. "It could be magic. Of course, that's impossible, but...it _is_ you, and your world."

Serena's mouth opened. She hadn't really meant…but it did make sense. After a few seconds, she spoke.

"It's like 'Flippendo'." She said.

"Very." He said. "Well, maybe not just like Flippendo, it's more powerful-"

"My 'Flippendo' is powerful." Serena said, taking out her wand from her back pocket. "I bet I could power this whole thing for a moment in one shot."

Serena had that sort of dramatic, challenging, air about her again as she spun around, looking for the best place to aim. He would let her, of course, to see if it was actually possible, which it probably was…but not for a _long_ amount of time, really, unless…

"Aim it at the sand." The Doctor told her, beginning to dig through the sand below them until his hand came across a large, cold, smooth crystal-like object. It was flat and boxy and in the shape of a square.

Serena did just so, sending a jet of blue light streaming into the uncovered square crystal. After a few seconds, she could, even though she was not touching any of the wires, feel the electric energy radiating off of them.

"Why thank you, for doing the work for us." A cocky-sounding male voice spoke from outside of the structure. Serena realized why she had not been able to get a good look at any of the men she had encountered in the woods, for this one, and two others beside him, were covered completely in what appeared to be black hooded robes. Rather familiar looking hooded robes, actually.

"Are you Death Eaters?" Serena asked them immediately.

"Hah! As if I'd like to serve some bald, noseless maniac that was defeated thousands of years ago." The man laughed. "We seek the _true_ master-"

"The Master?" the Doctor interrupted, looking at the man with a somewhat wtf-surprised-confused-questioning expression.

"No, I don't work for either of your pathetic villains." The man said in a tone that suggested he was also rolling his eyes underneath his hood at this._Is it something in the 'being evil' contract which forces me to reveal my motives to the Hero(s)?_ He shook this thought aside and continued. "I serve to honor the Lord of the Dark Force-"

"Are you going on about _Darth Vader_ now?" Serena asked, a bit amusedly. Taunting stereotypical villains was _fun_!

"Of course not!" the man said, now slightly offended. "He is the all-seeing, the-"

"What…_Sauron_ from Lord of the Rings?" the Doctor asked, raising his eyebrows at the man.

"Or do you mean 'all-seeing' as in, '_I see all_'?" Serena interjected, fluffing her hair and dramatically doing a very Magenta-like thing with her face and voice as she said that line from Time Warp.

"I'm not telling you." The man folded his arms and shook his head in a childlike manner.

"Fine, don't." Serena laughed, sort of taunting him in an as-if-I-care manner. "But…'_are you in to the time slip_?' "

The hooded man brought himself back to what he meant to be doing in the first place, and stepped closer to the structure.

"I'd suggest you don't move." The man said, back to his usual cocky air. Beneath his hood, he was grinning.

"And why would that be?" the Doctor asked.

"Because!" The man boomed, and in one rather swooping motion, pulled out a thin stick of an object from beneath his robes, sending another jet of vivid blue light at a spot near the ground in-between Serena and the Doctor.

Enormous surges of electrical energy filled the wires surrounding the two of them and the man laughed aloud.

The robed man sighed, and looked at them again.

"Because…if you move, you touch the wires…you Die, yes, capital D, Die! Mkay?" The man cocked his head and folded his arms again.

"So our suffering amuses you?!" Serena said angrily at him. She couldn't even reach for her bloody wand now, being that there was a wire directly beneath her arm and by her jeans pocket.

"That's pretty much it, yeah. More amusing than your bad acting." The man shrugged carelessly.

Serena fumed at this. Under normal circumstances, there would have been a hex hurling his way in a second, and _not_ for the comment on her acting.

"So, if we are going to die anyways," the Doctor said, whist carefully aiming his sonic screwdriver behind his back. "…and, as long as you're filling the slightly stereotypical villain role…_who do you work for_?"

Serena, from the position that she was frozen in, could not see the Doctor, no matter how much she tried to look out of the corner of her eye to the space behind and to the left of her. _They weren't going to die_, she thought, slightly fearfully, _they just weren't… _

"He is Javna…" the hooded man said, in barely a whisper. He then raised his voice back to the boom which it had been before. "And…he…shall…RULE!"

The sound of exploding glass was suddenly heard from inside the structure as the square magic-amplifying crystal was shattered by the sonic screwdriver's sonicness. The electricity in the surrounding wires died.

As Serena quickly drew out her wand, the men on the outside took notice and shot several kinds of spells at them. Moving towards each other quickly, Serena and the Doctor both ducked as the spells flew over their heads, one jet of light setting fire to a tree behind them, and sparks flying where another made contact with a metal beam. They grabbed ahold of each other in the process of diving out of the way of oncoming hexes, and Serena, without thinking of any precise location, moved to dissaparate them out of the structure as more jinxes flew at them.

In the half-second between where Serena had completed the 'spell' of apparation and before they actually vanished, Serena distinctly saw a jet of red light very close.


	25. Columbia

Nymphadora Tonks, back on Boxing Day afternoon at Hogwarts, headed down the hallway to the Room of Requirement with a certain thing in mind. It was perhaps a slightly odd thing for a witch to be wanting from the Room, but, seeing as her dad _was_ a Muggle-Born, she too had seen a couple of Muggle movies in the past, and had quite an urge to see a certain one in particular again.

She saw Lilah hurriedly fleeing from the room with a small sack in tow, and Luna casually strolling out of the Room with some kind of a Muggle device.

"…the Ravenclaw Common Room, okay?" Luna spoke into the mobile phone, before hanging up and placing it in her pant's pocket. She spotted Tonks and looked curiously in her direction. "Oh, hello. Are you using the Room, too?"

Tonks nodded.

"It's a bit stupid, but I thought I'd get this DVD from it…" Tonks told her, trailing off as she changed her hair color from short and pink to something bight red and in a slightly different style, though still short.

"That one?" Luna asked, pointing to her hair. Luna had somewhere seen the movie as well and smiled amusedly at Tonk's hair.

"I was in a mood." Tonks shrugged. "And Remus told me he'd never heard of Rocky Horror, so…"

Tonks moved closer to the door of the Room of Requirement, concentrating on the movie she wanted…and also on some way of making it viewable at Hogwarts. Finally, she opened to door, Luna following Tonks into the Room as well.

"…What…the…?" Tonks gaped at what she saw in front of her. It was not the DVD, it was not even the TARDIS, it was…Columbia? She quickly shook her hair back to how it was before, as Columbia herself being in the Room was a strange enough sight at it was.

"How did I get_ here_?" Columbia asked, looking around and at the two people before her. "Where _is_ this?"

"Hogwarts, Scotland." Tonks answered shortly. _The Room didn't do people, it just didn't…crossover people or not_.

"Where?" Columbia asked again, not knowing what on Earth 'Hogwarts' was…_or if it even was Earth…could it be part of that Transsexual place that they were always talking about?_

"…I think it was the TARDIS." Luna said, confused as well, but also remembering what those who had been in it when it went to 1985 had said about the Room making the TARDIS a load more psychic than it already was. "It might have made the Room able to do more."

"But the TARDIS can't 'do' people either." Tonks said. "I have seen one episode, actually, Runaway Bride, and-"

With a weird shudder, much like that of the TARDIS itself, Tonks, Luna, and Columbia found themselves being thrown forward, all of them loosing their balance as they fell to the ground. There was a flash of dark light. Looking around now, the three of them found themselves not in the Room or Requirement, or anyplace in Hogwarts, at all. Rather, they were now at the top of a large flight of cement stairs outside of some sprawling building-type place.

There were stairs above them as well. It was quite sunny out, and the various-leveled, connecting buildings in the surrounding area were given a feel that was both futuristic and ancient.

"Ooh…I think this is Tollana!" Luna exclaimed, getting up from the concrete. It looked identical. She then turned to Tonks and Columbia, both of which had no idea what 'Tollana' was, and explained further in a dreamy manner. "It's another planet…I've seen pictures of it before."

"Is it? But where are the aliens…?" Tonks looked around, a bit skeptically. The architecture was a bit odd (in a nice way), but it didn't really look like a different planet…it looked, and felt, a lot like earth.

"Aliens don't always look like aliens," Columbia spoke up, looking at the very human looking figures that walked about this campus-like area. "Frankie doesn't. D'you think this is Transsexual, Transylvania?"

"Do they look like Transvestites to you?" Tonks asked her as the walked down the cement steps into an open courtyard patio-type area which held a few cement and tile blocks which someone was sitting on, reading a book. She didn't think that he did. He looked sort of hippie-ish, really.

Columbia shook her head, they didn't. She went ahead of them, kind of happily, up a small amount of stairs onto a raised cement area that looked as if it might be used as a stage sometimes. She spun in a bit of a tap-motion a few times, and then paused.

"Neither of you have told me who you are." She said, with sort-of raised eyebrows.

"Luna Lovegood," Luna said, and then motioned in Tonk's direction. "and Tonks…we're witches, actually, you know."

Tonks just grinned and something occurred to her.

"Serena would love this." Tonks said, laughing amusedly, as she looked at Columbia. "I think she might be a bit of a Magenta fan, but she loves it all, really. She knows half the lines to Time Warp by heart."

"Who's Serena?" Columbia asked…also sort of wondering why all of these people seemed to know about her life.

"Oh, Serena Spinks, she's a friend of ours. She's sort of traveling right now…with the Doctor." Tonks said, with a kind of fondness in her voice as she did so. She wasn't in love with him as she was with Remus, but there was still something she really liked when she was with the Doctor. She could never be a full-time Companion, she knew, but in her mind she was quite set on going with him again the next time they met up again.

Luna stepped into the other brown-orange-red colored tiles on the other side of the stage-thing into an undercover, but open, area. A few people walked through it, one of them looking at Tonks and Columbia quite strangely, as if they had never seen people dressed the way that Columbia was, or having hair in the shade that Tonks did. Most eyes bypassed Luna completely, in fact, her long, scraggly blonde hair and laidback-indie clothing seemed to blend it quite a lot with everybody else.

"Do you think we're not in two thousand seven or eight anymore?" Luna asked Tonks, getting quite the feeling that they were not.

"2007?" Columbia looked at Luna strangely. "But I was in nineteen seventy five…you mean you two are from the future?"

Tonks, getting the same idea that she had had in 1985, picked a weather-battered newspaper-type thing called 'The Peak' off of some stairs that lead to a walkway on a level above the stage. For a moment she just stared, then turned around to face the others again.

"No wonder they think you and I look weird…it's 1968." Tonks said, with her eyebrows slightly raised in incredulousness. "Oh, and this place…it's a University, in BC Canada. Earth."

Tonks nodded whilst saying the word 'Earth'. She hurried, nearly tripping as she did so, down the other side of the steps to join Luna and Columbia.

Weirdly, as they looked about the place, and the hippies, in interest, the mobile phone in Luna's pocket began to ring. She wondered if it was Pizza Hut calling back to tell her that they hadn't the fuckingest where the Ravenclaw Common Room was, but then…if she was back in time, how could it be…?

_Ohhh, _that_ kind of 'Universally working'_, Luna smiled, realizing what the Room had really given her as she took it out of her pocket.


	26. 100pc dark, with a chance of Thestrals

Over on the other side of things….they (being Serena and the Doctor) landed in a heap in an unfamiliar room. It was about as impossibly dark of a place as there could be, not a single shred of light coming from anywhere. You know those cartoons in which the characters are in pitch blackness, yet you can still see a couple of white eyeballs floating around on the screen? Well, this was not like that at all. Not in the slightest way would anybody viewing this scene from the outside be able to see the eyeballs of the Tenth Doctor glowing like white and brown light bulbs in the dark, because…well, eyeballs just don't do that. Not even Time Lord eyeballs. And it's pointless to describe what _wasn't_ happening here, so let's go to the point of what _was_ going on in the weirdly dark room…

Serena had managed to apparate them someplace, though, due both to the fact that she was hardly thinking as she did it (along with that she wasn't really that great on a normal day, to be completely honest), and a certain something else which occurred half-seconds prior to the actual disappearance, they landed oddly on the floor of somewhere she had never been to.

She was partly sprawled against him. The Doctor, though he could not see her at all through the darkness, could feel her against him, and wondered briefly, as he began to get up, why Serena was not doing the same…nor really doing much of anything. He could tell she was alive, obviously…she was warm and breathing and didn't appear to actually be injured in any way. He remembered seeing the red jet of light…a stunning spell. Of course. She was just unconscious. Unable to rouse her (as, unlike a wizard, he could not just 'Ennervate' Serena back to consciousness) , he realized Serena would just have to wait out however long the spell took, and decidedly tried to find out where they were.

Finding the Sonic Screwdriver, the Doctor, in an attempt for any sort of light, turned it on. He was quite astonished to find that, while the sound and everything else still indicated that it was in fact working, there was absolutely none of the usual blue light coming from the end of it.

Serena's eyes fluttered open slowly. For a moment, she wasn't sure if she had opened them at all because of the dark, and blinked once again. Her wand, she felt, was still in her hand…_but why was she on the ground in some really dark place?_

"Ooh," Serena said quietly as she pushed herself up, her eyes lighting up a little bit, excitedly (but not, you know…_glowing_ either…) . "And this is…? Really fucking _dark_ is what it is…Lumos! Come on, _Lumos!"_

Serena impatiently flicked her wand, muttering the spell. _Lumos was a hugely easy spell_, she thought, _why wasn't it working_?

"It's strange, isn't it?" the Doctor said quietly to her. Perhaps it was the not knowing if there was anything around to overhear them, but the both of them were talking quite a lot quieter than normal. "I'm guessing this wasn't on purpose…?"

"No, I have no idea…I wasn't thinking at all when I did it, really, more of a 'just someplace _else'_ sort of thing, you know." Serena admitted. "Do you think it's still part of the Survivor Dome?"

"How far _can_ you apparate?" the Doctor asked her, wonderingly. "But I think we are, it seems sort of…cave-ey, does it feel like a cave to you too?"

"Uhm…maybe." Serena agreed. She realized just then that she had actually never been in a cave before, but she didn't want to admit this to him.

They started to walk further into or out of this cave-like room, holding on to each other so as not to loose the other person.

"Uhgh…this reminds me of the Thestrals." Serena said, after ending up waking right into some large unknown thing. She tried to feel out whatever it was she had hit, and was quite surprised. "Ooohkay, this _is_ a Thestral."

Serena snorted with laughter as she petted the beast's leathery back.

"And _I_ thought I was going to get to see _aliens_, going with you…" She laughed incredulously, looking in what she hoped was the Doctor's direction. "Could have just stayed at Hogwarts for _this_ guy."

"Better a Thestral than a Dalek." The Doctor bent level with the Thestral for a moment, petting it someplace near its face and grinning at it pointlessly through the dark. He knew he could see them, of course, but he had never actually been around one before to see it. He then looked over in the direction he hoped was Serena's. "Can you see them? I mean, normally…not, when it's dark like this?"

"No." Serena said, shaking her head and smiling quite pointlessly in the dark. "I can't…but I like them a lot. They're different. They have a bit of a bad rep because of what they seem like, but who cares, really. They're _well_ amazing."

He was going to say something, but, through the pitch black of the cave-room, they both head something that sounded very un-Thestral. It was human…a female.

"Seri…?" a weak, but kind of high pitched and familiar, female voice called out.

Serena didn't quite know who it belonged to. It didn't sound like Patrice, nor anyone she was close to back home, but she had definitely heard it before. Whoever it was sounded as if they were trying to call her name.

They moved closer to the source of the sound, the Thestral now walking along with them, in-between Serena and the Doctor. Serena wasn't sure, but she got the impression that it could see very well in the dark.

"Who is it?" Serena called out towards the voice, quietly. "I'm here…if that was supposed to be for me…?"

"It is…you…" The voice panted back, gratefully. " 'Trice, she said you…is it, is…"

"Zoey?" the Doctor realized who the strained voice in the dark belonged to. It was Zoey, the excitable, bouncy, making-deals-in-every-direction, girl of about 19 or 20 back from the camp. "What happened to you?"

"Oh, it's you also…" Zoey said, with another tone of gratitude in her voice as she did so. "I dunno how long...I.."

Zoey sounded really quite drained and as if she were holding onto the last of her energy as she spoke. She closed her eyes for a moment, breathing shallowly, and then continued.

"I need the sun, I'm losing everything…energy, magic, almost…life." Zoey told them, herself slipping limply downwards along the wall she was bound and sitting against.

"No, I am _not_ going to see you yet." Serena said firmly at the Thestral, then turned her face back towards Zoey, placing her hand on hers with that really optimistic manner she tended to have at times. "We'll get you out of here, it's sunny out right now. I can apparate, and, well, he's the Doctor and he can do pretty much everything."

"I can't leave…it's an enchantment, it's eternal darkness, and I'm bound to it by him." Zoey said, sadly. "I would have used magic and gotten out myself ages ago if I could….I'm bound to die here, aren't I?"

"No, you're not." The Doctor told her, equally as determined-sounding as Serena was. Crouched on the other side of the slumped, chained girl, he could not sonic the locks affixing her to this spot, nor could Serena do anything about them with her wand. It was magic beyond anything either of them could undo, and that wasn't even the most powerful thing bounding Zoey to this room of the cave.

Neither of them was actually hugely surprised by the revelation that Zoey was some form of a witch…magic and Serena's world seemed to be all around in this place in some kind of way.

The Doctor looked at Zoey as she tried to hold on to anything she had left.

"I promise…we will find a way to get you out of here." He told her. " 'Him'…is that the one working for Javna?"

"Yes." Zoey nodded. "And there is something you can do…the Hand of Fatima…if there's time…"

"Oh, we have all the time in the world." The Doctor said, possibly grinning slightly. "In the universe, even."

"That's good, because I don't know how much longer I can-" Zoey began to say, but was cut off by Serena.

"If you need magical energy to survive," Serena said. "I can give you mine for the moment until we can actually help you…I think I'm a bit useless if I can't do magic, but I won't die."

"That's so nice of you…but I think that's what they want. You, or Patrice, to be completely powerless. They would want it for themselves." Zoey told her. _That was really the only reason that she could think of for them having imprisoned her…to use her as some kind of a trap. _

"Well I don't care." Serena said again. "They don't really understand that I don't think that I could ever really be powerless for ever, and even if I can, well…I don't care. I'd rather live like a Muggle than have you die here."

"You're sweet, and I guess…if that's…what you…really…want." Zoey said, smiling halfly. It was becoming quite hard for her to keep conscious.

"How do I do it, then? Because I don't really know how, I just thought…if it would work, if I could, possibly…?" Serena admitted. That was quite her, never really thinking that she actually knew what she was doing before she said anything.

"You don't have to do anything, really. You just have to let me…I'm thinking sort of like the sun, but different." Zoey told her, knowing that she herself had actually heard of her own sort of witches (which were actually a bit different from the kind that Serena was) doing this sort of thing before. "I won't take all of it, I couldn't. I wouldn't feel right if I didn't leave you with at least some to get on by for the moment."

Zoey took Serena's hands against her own, concentrating for a moment and tying to absorb her power and magical energy. Serena, well, as Zoey had said, tried to just let her do it. It was a bit quick, taking less than a minute, and quite an odd feeling for Serena as the power shifted through their touched hands. If the room had not been under that spell making any kind of light impossible within it, a faint orange-ish glow would have been present. At the end, once Zoey had finished taking the amount she needed, she removed her hands from Serena's.

From pure lightheadedness at the sudden difference, Serena involuntarily buckled from her kneeling position and flopped onto the floor. She lay there in that side-facedown position for a few seconds, then pushed herself back upwards along the Thestral, apparently alright. She was just dizzy, but she hadn't actually passed out.

"I thought you said you _wouldn't_ die." The Doctor, who couldn't actually see Serena, but could, as anyone nearby could have, tell what had happened, kidded her. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, really, just sort of…spinny and all right now." Serena answered, feeling slightly that feeling that one usually feels when drunk. She then turned her attention to Zoey.

"What about you, did it work?" She asked Zoey.

"Oh, I feel _loads_ better. Maybe not as much as usual, but still, thanks." Zoey replied, in nearly her usual bubbly manner again. "But you two, the Hand of Fatima…you know about it, right, Doctor?"

He did. Serena did not, though, she assumed she'd be finding that out fairly soon.

Unfortunately having to depart without Zoey, the Doctor got up, taking Serena's hand and pulling her up along with him. They might have all of the TARDIS time in the universe to retrieve the Hand of Fatima, but they had to actually get to the TARDIS itself first.

"Oh, damn it that I can't apparate." Serena said, looking around pointlessly in the dark for any kind of way out. They had moved hurriedly in some direction, not knowing actually if there even was any sort of way out, but trying to find one. Feeling something beak-like nudging against her leg, Serena looked down, her hands coming to find a leathery head belonging to the beak. Thessie (what Serena had nicknamed the beast in her mind, anyways) had followed them.

"Like a dog, she is." Serena said, petting Thessie, who had seemed to take to the two of them quite well. "Do you think she knows a way out? I mean, she has to have gotten _in_ somehow."

"Oh, you are _not_ 'useless'." The Doctor said to Serena, bounding over to the Thestral as well. He then turned to Thessie and began to say something to her, but whatever it was, Serena did not hear it.

Instead, at about the moment that they began to let the Thestral take the lead, the instant lightheaded, spinning, feeling returned to her. Her surroundings faded from all senses, and she felt herself falling…possibly colliding into the Thestral…being caught by somebody…and then passed out completely.


	27. An Underwater Reunion

She was somewhere…laying on top of something…faintly hearing movement and some mechanical sounds. As Serena's surroundings came back into consciousness, she opened her eyes, jarred slightly by the sudden fact that it was light where she was, as opposed to the pitch dark cave she last remembered being in. _God, I'm unconscious a lot these days…_Serena thought, rolling her eyes, _It must be a thing to do with being a Companion…speaking of that, where the bloody hell is-_

Her train of thought was broken by the sight of who she had been thinking of, who was as well the source of the sounds of both movement and TARDIS travel. So she _was_ in the TARDIS, then.

"Oh, good, you're awake." The Doctor said to her, looking over to Serena as he piloted the TARDIS and noticed that she was stirring.

"I am, yeah…how long wasn't I?" Serena gave a light groan, sitting up, possibly slightly embarrassed.

"Not long-" He told her, going around to her on the other side of the console in the center of the room.

"How long's '_not long'?_" Serena asked in a way which made her sound more impatient than she actually was.

"Really, not long…fifteen minutes? We just got back to the TARDIS about three minutes ago." The Doctor assured her.

Serena just sighed, standing against the side of the console, and looked at no spot in particular whilst subconsciously placing her hand on the handle of her wand which was still in her right jeans pocket.

"You are selfless." He told her, standing beside her, facing the controls as well, but glancing over in Serena's direction for the moment.

"I don't _try_ to; it just ends up that way." Serena said in a very matter-of-fact way. "…I was sorted to Gryffindor, after all."

"You're a Gryffindor?" the Doctor said, not actually having known this, as Serena, nor anyone else, had not actually said.

"You didn't know?" Serena told him, rather surprised at this. She was a pit of Gryffindority, so she had been told by Lilah once.

"Well, yeah, I thought, probably, maybe." The Doctor admitted to Serena. "But I could have pegged you for another one."

"Which one would that be?" Serena asked, wondering if it was the same house that the Sorting Hat had said she could have been in, had she not suited Gryffindor better.

With that, the TARDIS noises came to a halt, as the ship herself came to a halt, making Serena stumble slightly on the spot, but not actually fall over. She looked at him in a questioningly amused way whilst tying back her hair into a flopped bun of a thing, which was purposely more to one side than being dead center. Her now pointless wand lay on top of the controls beside her, but Serena wasn't all too bothered by that right now; they were someplace new.

* * *

"It's beautiful." Serena said appreciatively as she stared in awe out of the curved glass window which ran half of the length of the white and silver upholstered semicircular lounge room which the two of them now stood in, just outside of the TARDIS. "Where are we, anyways?"

"Atlantis." The Doctor said brightly. Outside of the window occurred a seemingly endless ocean; they were underwater.

"The lost city?" Serena asked immediately. "…It can't be the Muggle resort in the Caribbean, can it? It looks too…space-ey."

"It is 'Muggle', but it's neither; it's a planet." He told her, looking out of the window at the vast ocean as well. "The _only_ planet to be made entirely of water, a big tourist spot right now."

Looking away from the depths of the sea outside of the window, the pair headed out of the lounge room and down the hallway which lead to the rest of the underwater resort which they were at.

"The Hand of Fatima's here somewhere, then?" Serena asked questioningly. "And you never said what it actually was or did."

"Somewhere, I think it is." The Doctor looked around searchingly, as if hoping to spot it hanging off a doorway. "It should be on display…"

"And it _is_?" Serena prompted again, feeling like she'd been wondering this for a while.

The Doctor turned to answer her, as if he had just realized that he hadn't yet. However, before he could, a loud pitched female scream was heard from not too far away.

"It's always _something_ with places you're at!" Serena said as she heard the scream. Her eyes flicked in the direction of it and then over to the Doctor in a half-rolling way, but with the eager fire that was typical to Serena.

The sound of it was unmistakable to the Doctor, he had heard it countless times a long time ago, regenerations ago. Here?… but it had to be, he had just never heard anybody else make quite that sound.

He tore off in the direction of the shriek, his converse rounding a corner of the hall and coming upon an open sunken-leveled bar area. He saw a curly pouf of thick red hair, thicker and a different shade than Serena's, which belonged to a short female form standing atop the marble floor and staring in surprise out of another window. His assumptions were correct.

"What is it? Is something out there?" the Doctor came to a halt besides the petite redhead. She looked only to be between three to five years older than she had been when he had last seen her so many years ago. "Mel?"

The redhead turned, her expression a mix of shock, confusion, and eagerness. Her eyes shone in about the same way that Serena's had, only, unlike Serena, she did not recognize the man standing before her, who was now grinning in a fond way that one only does when unexpectedly meeting someone whom they had not seen in a long time.

"Didn't you see it? It was this weird thing, like a Jersey Devil, it just appeared from nowhere in the ocean right outside the window…" Mel began to tell him, currently oblivious to the fact that she was talking to the Doctor. "It's nothing compared to what I used to see all of the time when I was with this one guy, he went by 'the Doctor', a few years ago, but I haven't seen him in ages…Anyways, I don't know why I'm telling you my life story, I don't even know who you are…but I suppose you heard me scream, didn't you? I end up doing that a lot…"

"Oh, Mel, do you ever!" the Doctor said, remembering how this girl could shriek like nothing else sometimes.

"Do I know you?" Mel asked him curiously.

"I think you do." He took her hand in his own in such a way that part of her's was near his wrist. "Or, you did…the Verviods, Rani, Paradise Towers...ending on Iceworld in Dragonfire?"

Mel eyed him, she could feel what she had before, but she didn't need to; the Doctor's eyes said enough. She knew.

"Oh, Doctor! You've regenerated!" Mel flung herself brightly into him, her arms around him and his around her in a moment of reunion. Coming apart from each other, Mel beamed. "You look good."

"As do you. So, what are you doing here on Atlantis, anyways?" He asked her. "Are you still with Glitz?"

Mel nodded.

"We are." She said. "We're sort of taking a holiday right now, thought this place seemed good…staying over on room 6710 a couple floors up. Well, I _hope_ we still are staying there…the bed blew up last night, some stupid artifact Glitz nicked from the display room."

"A display room?" the Doctor's expression lit up curiously.

"Yes, not really that far from here. It's a big artifact exhibit with loads of things from all over, Earth even. If you ask me, I'd say that Glitz wanted to come here on purpose to see what he could get his hands on." Mel explained, before pausing and looking inquisitively at the Doctor. "Why are _you_ here, Doctor? Is there something on display you're looking for as well?"

"Could say that I am, yeah." The Doctor leant in closer to Mel. "Have you ever heard of the Hand of Fatima?"

"Yes, I have…and I think it's being held here too." Mel nodded. "But why are you-?"

Serena, who had been watching them intently from a few feet away, took up on the moment and came over to the Doctor and Mel.

"Because we need it to save someone's life." Serena said, determined and optimistically, then introduced herself to the other young woman who apparently knew the Doctor previously. "I'm Serena, by the way."

"Mel." Mel told Serena, exchanging the favor, and smiling, which Serena returned as well. "Are you with the Doctor now?"

"I suppose so, yeah, I am." Serena nodded happily. "At least until about April 5th in my own timeline, anyways."

Mel looked confused at the last part.

"Series 4." The Doctor explained, sensing Mel's confused expression. "Back to Cannon then, but I can hop around a few between-seasons fanfics between the times nothing's really happening in the Cannon world. We met up a few weeks after Voyage of the Damned, for me anyways; it was still October 2007 for Serena…probably because the writer of this one started the crossover back in October…Anyways, the Hand of Fatima! You said it was in the exhibit?"

Again, Mel nodded, this time quite curious. Whatever the Doctor and Serena were doing, she wanted to help out on it as well. Leading the way, Mel showed them out of the bar and down another hallway towards a set of double doors, which beheld a banner above them advertising the 'rare and unusual' artifact exhibit inside.


End file.
